Livin' Larger
by Bluemoonalto
Summary: Episode Rewrite Challenge: Firefury said it wasn't enough to just criticize an episode. Why not make it better? Here's my attempt to revise a flawed episode that had huge potential.
1. Chapter 1

**Livin' Larger**  
_by Bluemoonalto  
based on the episode "Livin' Large" by Mark Drop_

_Author's Note: This is not a fic in the usual sense. It is an exercise in creative criticism, a step beyond my usual commentary and nitpicking, an effort to test my skills and (perhaps) rescue an episode that had a great deal of potential. I make no claim to the story itself; "Livin' Large" is the work of Mark Drop. And of course, _Danny Phantom _itself was created by Butch Hartman._

_When I first watched this episode I was full of hope. After several action-centered, fight-scene-heavy episodes featuring huge ghosts with apocalyptic power and no discernable personality, I was glad to see a story that had a human scale and a strong focus on character development. But the execution left me horribly disappointed._

_When it came time to organize my thoughts to post a preliminary reaction to the episode (I still haven't written a full-length review) I kept coming back to the story elements that I would have changed if I could. The more I thought about the episode, the more ways I saw to improve it._

_Eventually I remembered Firefury's Episode Rewrite Challenge (issued in January, 2007) to rewrite an episode, keeping the essential structure and plot elements, but improving the writing. At the time the challenge was issued I had not given it much thought, but suddenly I was intrigued. Could I fix the flaws I perceived in "Livin' Large"?_

_My goals are as follows:_

_1. To increase the number and depth of interactions among major characters. For example, Vlad will be home when Danny comes looking for his Portal._

_2. To shift the episode's theme from "sudden wealth turns the Fentons into shallow jerks" to "sudden wealth can't make the Fentons any happier than they already were."_

_3. To improve continuity with the rest of the series._

_The first few paragraphs of the story basically repeat what was seen on the show. Be patient with me; my revision diverts from the original very soon!_

**Teaser**

It had been a very quiet walk home. They didn't talk about going to the Nasty Burger, or heading over to Sam's for a movie, or hanging out at the Mall. No, not today. They just trudged straight towards FentonWorks, Danny in the lead, head-down and silent, his two best friends trailing behind with occasional sideward glances of shared concern for his obvious exhaustion. Once home, Danny dragged his feet up the stairs to the second floor, and walked right through his bedroom door as if it hadn't even been there. Sam and Tucker had to open the door to follow him in, just in time to see Danny collapse face-first onto his bed. Sam dropped into Danny's navy-blue beanbag chair, and Tucker sprawled in the chair beside the desk.

"I am so dead!" Danny's voice was muffled by his bedspread. "Who knew that learning stuff and groping for the approval of our peers could be so exhausting?"

"Seven-thirty to three thirty?" Tucker added sardonically. "School's like, an eight-hour day."

"And every day's a battle... especially when I have to battle something." Danny groaned and rolled over on one side, propping himself up on his elbow. Despite his melodramatic entrance, it was obvious that his energy level was rebounding, thanks no doubt to some mysterious combination of youthful resilience and latent ghost power. "Is this it, guys? Is the fun over? Is life just downhill from here?"

"No way!" Tucker answered. "Life'll get a heck of a lot better when someone pays us to work our butts off."

As if on cue, Jack Fenton chose that exact moment to burst into the room. "Hello, youngsters! How was school?"

"Well, it was pretty exhau—"

"That's super," Jack interrupted in a voice that made it clear he hadn't heard a word Danny said and didn't really care. He just kept talking, a jovial torrent of words. "Your mother and I need the help of three strong hands down in the lab. So, let's hop to!"

Inspired by Tucker's comment, Danny retorted, "How much are you paying?"

"Name your price, kids, the sky's the limit!"

He was out the door as abruptly as he had arrived, and in his wake the three kids glanced at each other with puzzlement. "Name your price?" Sam echoed skeptically.

"No way he means it," Danny replied. "He doesn't even pay me to mow the lawn."

"Well, apparently something's changed." Tucker, who was always on the lookout for the next great opportunity, jumped to his feet and pumped his fist in celebration. "The sky's the limit!" He was out the door like a shot. Sam and Danny shook off their existential weariness and followed as he scrambled down the stairs as fast as his feet could take him.

They stopped short at the foot of the stairs, mouths hanging open in shock. The lab looked like a tornado had hit it, the floor littered with boxes, canisters and crates, some empty, others already filled with components and spare parts and tools. Jack was struggling to shift a massive, six-foot-tall piece of equipment away from a wall, and Maddie was over by the Ghost Portal, using an acetylene torch on one of the control panels. Jazz was seated at a work bench in one shadowy corner, wrapping beakers and test tubes in newspaper before packing them away in an old cardboard box.

Sam slipped past Danny and sidled up to Jazz, leaning over and whispering, "What the heck...?"

Jazz rolled her eyes and shrugged, then answered loudly enough for her parents to hear. "What do I know? They haven't told me anything! As soon as I got home from school, they just put me to work packing up glassware. Do you have any idea how many Erlenmeyer flasks this family owns?"

"A hundred ninety-three!" Jack answered proudly.

Tucker nudged Danny in the ribs and muttered, "That's at least a hundred ninety more than Erlenmeyer ever had."

"We started out with an even two hundred, but seven of them were sacrificed last month in the Fenton Hyperdimensional Ecto-Liquifaction Project." Jack was off on a nostalgic journey. "Shattered into a million pieces from thermal shock. Boiling hot ectoplasm everywhere, like so much pink salt water taffy." He paused to wipe away a tear. "It was a tragedy, a genuine tragedy."

Maddie turned off her torch and slipped her goggles up onto her head. "Danny, Sweetie, please help your father dismantle the photon generator. Sam, grab a screwdriver and start disconnecting the cables to the satellite array. Don't worry, the power has been shut off. Tucker, why don't you pack up the oscilloscope." Marching orders given, she opened a panel on the wall and reached for a pair of wire cutters.

The kids just stared at her, dumbfounded, frozen in place. Even Jazz stopped working, and sat quietly rotating a beaker in her hands. Quarter turn. Quarter turn. Quarter turn. Danny balled up his hands into fists and took a deep breath, one that might have powered a ghostly wail if he had been in ghost form. Instead, it manifested as a demanding bellow.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?"

There was a long pause during which nobody moved. Finally, Maddie smiled indulgently and pointed the wire cutters at Jack. "What did you father tell you, Sweetie?"

Sam answered quickly, "He didn't say anything, Mrs. Fenton, except that you guys needed our help."

Tucker quickly added, "And that we could name our own price. I'd like to name a hundred dollars, please. I'd like to call it 'Ben.'"

"Done!" said Jack, whipping out his wallet and handing Tucker a crisp $100 bill. "'Ben' it is!"

Maddie shook her head wearily, but never stopped smiling. "Danny, Jazz, your father and I got an incredible offer this morning for the house. The agent was acting on behalf of an anonymous deep-pockets investor, who wants to take possession of the building immediately. He was so committed to the purchase that he paid a great deal more than market value—"

Jack jumped in. "Several dozen times more!"

"—and also arranged for the simultaneous sale of a twenty-seven room Georgian-style mansion over in Porter Heights."

Jazz and Danny replied in indignant unison, "You sold our house!?"

"Yes, we did. And we have to be out by noon tomorrow. Anything we can't get out of the house by then becomes the property of the new owner. So we need to pack up as much of this equipment as we can, fast!"

"Just the lab?" Jazz protested. "What about our furniture, and clothes and stuff?"

"We'll just buy new!" Jack answered, as he whipped out a thick bundle of paper from his back pocket. He quickly unfolded what turned out to be a cashier's check the size of a small bath towel, and handed it over to Jazz, whose eyes grew wide with astonishment as she read it.

"Wow, that's a lot of zeroes!"

Maddie giggled like a little girl with a new toy. "I know! Isn't it amazing?"

Danny finally found his voice again. "Wait a minute!" he shouted indignantly. "What about the Fenton Portal? If you sell the house, how will I... uh, how will _you_ access the Ghost Zone?"

Jazz marched over and handed the enormous check to her brother, then smiled triumphantly as he stared at it, slack jawed. Jack and Maddie beamed with pride. Danny finally managed to swallow and then whispered, "Wow... that's a lot of zeroes."

**CUE OPENING CREDITS**

_Author's Note:_

_At the end of each scene I'll point out the major changes and some of my reasons for making them. The biggest change in the teaser is that the Guys in White do not appear. The sale has already been made, and the buyer is anonymous. I will actually keep the buyer's identity secret for most of the first act, to add some mystery to the story._

_I have also deleted any implication that the Fentons' equipment is shoddy. I considered that element of the original episode to be a major break with series continuity, so out it goes! They're going to take almost everything with them, leaving the new owners nothing to work with. They'll have to bring in their own shoddy equipment!_

_Since the Guys in White do not make an appearance in this scene, I moved the opening credits to the end. (In the original, the agents' arrival was the"cliffhanger" before the credits.) This means that Act I will begin with the Fentons' arrival at their new home._

_Little things: Danny is not in ghost form when he arrives home. Jazz is down in the lab, helping with the packing. I slipped a mention of sticky pink goo into this scene; trust me, there's not going to be any sticky pink goo anywhere else in the story. Oh... and Danny did not lock the Portal. Because we all know that there have never been any honking big deadbolts on those doors, right?_


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode "Livin' Large" by Mark Drop.

**Act I Scene 1**

Those were no ordinary house sparrows twittering in the trees that shaded Condescension Lane, but rare Golden-Throated Warblers and Blue Buntings. Jewel-toned hummingbirds hovered above the flowerbeds in front of number 7, busily harvesting the sweet nectar from the honeysuckle and trumpet vines, totally indifferent to the hectic comings and goings as delivery truck after delivery truck after delivery truck cycled through the semi-circular driveway:

Antiques-R-Us  
Town and Country Couture  
Lord Leopold's House of Lighting Design  
No-Sweat Home Gym Equipment

Jack emerged onto the veranda, the remains of a smashed flat-panel television tucked under one arm as he waved good-bye to the delivery truck from Care-Less Hi-End Electronics. "Thanks for everything, fellas! And don't worry about the one you dropped, we'll just buy another one. Or maybe six. We're rich!"

Just as the electronics delivery truck was leaving, the moving van rolled in. Jack tossed what was left of the television into a boxwood hedge as he lumbered across the lawn to meet it. "Finally! I was beginning to think you guys had gotten lost, or sucked into a black hole or something. That lab equipment is our life's work, and totally irreplaceable!"

The burly mover in the passenger seat leaned out his window and spat a glob of tobacco juice at the silver-plated mailbox. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. Where d'ya want it, Mac?"

"Straight across the grand foyer, then downstairs to the billiards room. Or, as I like to call it: FentonWorks II!" He struck a melodramatic, action hero pose. "This time... it's _personal_."

* * *

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" 

Danny rolled his eyes at his father's over-the-top behavior, then turned away and slumped sullenly on the upholstered window seat. He and his friends had been watching the parade of delivery trucks all morning from the wide windows of his new bedroom. His furniture had been delivered more than an hour ago, but he hadn't shown much interest in his new digs.

Tucker shrugged and tried to lighten the mood. "What's with you, man? Cheer up! I mean, look at your new room. You've got three—count 'em—_three_ big screen TV's! The hugest stereo speakers I've ever seen, hooked up to the tiniest digital music player known to man. And this video game chair?" He sat down in the luxurious high-tech chair, bristling in game controls and surround-sound speakers, and took a spin. "It's heaven in Naugahyde!"

"I know I'm lucky," Danny sighed. "It's just... I'm worried about accessing the Ghost Zone."

"Finally" Sam jumped in eagerly. "I thought I was the only one freaking about your folks selling out."

"What I don't understand—what's driving me crazy—is that none of this makes any sense!" Danny reached around and rubbed the back of his neck, telegraphing his stress and frustration. "Why would any sane person pay that kind of money for an old house with a freaky high-tech Ops Center stuck on top? And a Ghost Portal in the basement? And even if they wanted all that stuff, why would they want us out in less than twenty-four hours?"

Sam sat up straight, suddenly alert. "Hey, Danny? I think I may have just spotted a likely suspect." She pointed over Danny's shoulder and out the window, toward the stately, Romanesque manor right next door.

Danny craned his head to see what she was pointing at—and his heart sank. There was Vlad Masters, standing on his front lawn in his silk pajamas and monogrammed velvet bathrobe, holding his rolled-up _Wall Street Journal _in a death-grip, glaring sourly at his new neighbor. Of _course_ the fruitloop had to live somewhere! But it had never occurred to Danny to wonder just where the town's new mayor had settled down. Big as his house was (and it was actually just a little bit bigger than theirs) it was definitely a major step down from the Dairy King's castle in Wisconsin. For one thing, it only had about an acre of land, with another mansion (theirs) right next-door. The two homes were only a stone's throw apart, in a juxtaposition that just screamed rivalry.

And speaking of rivalry, Jack was already bounding across the lawn toward his old college chum. From their vantage point in the second floor windows, the kids strained with little success to hear the conversation between the two men. From body language they could guess that Jack was relaying the story of his remarkable good fortune, and Vlad was barely suppressing the urge to blast him into next month.

Tucker whispered, "But why in the world would _Vlad_ want to buy your house?"

"Because he wants the _Portal_," Danny whispered back. "He's been living in Amity Park for what—almost two months, now? That's two months since the Guys in White demolished his castle in Wisconsin, two months without a Ghost Portal, which means two months without ready access to the Ghost Zone."

Sam nodded. "Buy the house, get control of the Fenton Portal. And if he controls the Portal, he can stop you from using it!"

Danny glowered. "Not if I get there first."

Meanwhile, down on the lawn at the dividing line between two properties, Jack was making plans. "...cozy backyard barbecues, and pool parties, and crab feasts, and ice cream socials, and... hey! How about a luau?"

Vlad muttered with disgust, "This was such a nice neighborhood before the riff-raff moved in..."

Suddenly Maddie burst from the front door of her new home. "Jack! You won't believe it! I got lost... in my walk-in closet! She giggled. "I finally got a ride out on my automated shoe rack."

Vlad's expression brightened. "...and neighborhood beautification is i _such /i _ a worthy civic virtue!" He beamed at his beloved as she jogged across the lawn to join them. "Maddie, my dear... how lovely to have you as a neighbor. I had forgotten for a moment... ah, yes. I'll drop over a little later with a 'Welcome to the Block' bundt cake."

"Ooooo!" Jack and Maddie cooed in unison.

"Grrrrr." From his window Danny watched the drama unfold, even though he couldn't quite hear what they were saying—every muscle tensed, fists clenched, eyes glowing green.

* * *

_Author's note: Well, the biggest change is that Danny suspects Vlad of being behind the sale of FentonWorks. This goes hand-in-hand with my earlier decision to not reveal the Guys in White in the episode's teaser. Vlad will be our Red Herring. _

_Note that Danny does not realize that Vlad has already installed a Portal in his new home._

_In order to set up the Red Herring, I allowed Danny to observe the interaction between Vlad and his parents; at the same time, it was necessary to hide some of what was said. This is easily accomplished by cutting back and forth between the scene on the lawn and the scene in Danny's room. And I have to say: what good is it to introduce Vlad to the story if he and Danny aren't going to interact? _

_I have also switched around the identities of the delivery trucks. In the episode, the moving truck with their personal possessions delivered a broken lamp, followed by a fancy truck full of brand-new lab equipment. I've replaced that with delivery trucks full of brand new possessions, followed by a moving van full of old lab equipment. _

_Little things: Hobson does not appear in this scene. He will appear later, as will the milkshakes._

* * *

_Deepest thanks to all who have reviewed so far. I was pleasantly surprised at the positive response to the first installment, which wasn't all that hugely different from the episode. The changes will be much more significant as the story unfolds! _


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode "Livin' Large" by Mark Drop.

**Act I, Scene 2**

Moonlight and Danny's glowing eyes provided the only sources of light on the back porch of the darkened house. All three kids were wearing dark pants and jackets, hoods pulled up over their heads, looking for all the world like a team of cat burglars. Danny retrieved the spare key from under the flowerpot beside the door, but apparently the building's new owner had already changed the locks. He tossed the useless key into the bushes and phased his hand through the door, opening it from the inside.

"I can't believe I'm breaking into my own house," he muttered.

Sam gave him a nudge. "It's not your house any more."

The three kids tiptoed into the shadowed kitchen, huddling close together and noting with wonder how quickly the vacant house had taken on an air of abandonment and despair. There was a dim, red glow from the digital clock on the coffee maker and a tiny bit of light from the LED control panel on the microwave, so Danny let his eyes fade back to their natural blue. All three kids pulled out their flashlights and headed toward the basement stairs.

Unbeknownst to the three teens, a motion sensor had activated a remote control camera high up near the ceiling in the corner of the room. The camera automatically switched to night-vision mode, silently tracking their movements and recording the scene in an eerie green. Another camera above the stairwell picked them up as they proceeded cautiously down the stairs to the lab.

The Ghost Portal doors were wide open.

"Dude!" Tucker was astonished. "Your parents didn't leave it like that, did they?"

"Of course not!" Danny replied, picking his way through the remains of broken and dismantled equipment toward the control panel. "But they dismantled the genetic lock, so any old Tom, Dick or Vlad could have done that." He swept the beam of his flashlight across what was left of the control panel; where the genetic lock had been there was nothing but a tangle of wires.

"Tucker?" Sam prompted.

The young techno-geek peered over Danny's shoulder, then nudged him out of the way so he could get a closer look. "I can't replace the genetic lock, but I should be able to cobble together something that will close the doors and keep them closed—something with an encrypted password." He dropped his backpack on the work bench and started to rummage through it, eventually producing a small toolkit and a miniaturized keypad. "And I'll program a fail-safe, so if somebody tampers with the device the doors will stay locked anyway. Sam, would you keep a light on what I'm doing here? And Danny, can you find the electrical panel and make sure the power's turned off to this circuit?"

Danny and Sam switched places and Danny ran back up to the kitchen. He knew exactly where the panel was, having done this task many times for his parents when they were installing new components for their many inventions. Above his head the night-vision camera tracked his every movement, and out in the living room the red light on a silent alarm quietly blinked.

"Okay!" Danny called down to the basement. "Power's off."

Knowing that it would take Tucker a few minutes to install the new device, Danny lingered in the kitchen, running a hand idly along the counter top and peeking into some of the drawers. Familiar utensils and kitchen gadgets still rested in their usual places. He opened one of the lower cabinets, which was still filled with pots and pans, mixing bowls and cookie sheets. With a vague sense of longing, he fetched a glass down from a cupboard and filled it up at the sink.

He paused. Among the dirty breakfast dishes still stacked up in the sink was a large, pink coffee mug with a chipped handle. He put his glass of water down on the counter and picked up the mug, turning it so he could read the slogan printed on the side: _World's Greatest Mom_. It had been a Mother's Day gift, purchased proudly with money he had saved up from his allowance when he was eleven. Oh, the handle was chipped and the inside was stained pale brown from years of daily use, but it was still a precious thing to him.

Sam's voice called from the lab, "Tucker says you can turn the power back on!"

Danny glanced up, sheepishly realizing that he was getting all nostalgic about an old coffee cup. They had new dishes now, fine china and lead crystal with no chips or stains. He dropped the mug back in the sink, flipped the breaker back to the "on" position, grabbed his flashlight and ran back down the stairs.

The Portal doors were closed again, and Tucker was focused intently on programming his new device. Still keeping her flashlight on his work, Sam glanced over her shoulder and said, "You need to come up with a password for this thing."

Danny grinned. "Already have one," he said, switching places with Sam at the workbench.

Tucker typed in a few more commands, then pushed the miniature keypad over to Danny. "Minimum eight characters, maximum sixteen. Type it in once, hit 'submit,' then type it in again and hit 'confirm.' Got it?"

"Got it," Danny replied. He quickly programmed in the code and handed the keypad back to Tucker. "Are we finished?"

"Yep. Let's get the heck out of here— I hate to say it, Danny, but this place is starting to give me the rampaging heebie-jeebies."

Danny shivered. "Yeah, I know what you mean. You can just tell that nobody lives here any more."

Sam, who was already halfway up the stairs, turned around and shined her flashlight up under her chin. "Hey! You don't suppose this spooky old house is... _haunted!? _ Do you? _Woooooooo!_" She spun around and ran away, her two best friends in hot pursuit, and they all stampeded through the darkened kitchen and out the back door, all efforts at stealth abandoned in the afterglow of a successful mission. They burst through the gate out onto the sidewalk, headed for the vacant lot on the next block where they had hidden their scooters.

In their hurry they didn't notice the plain, white panel truck parked on the street in front of FentonWorks. Nor did they see the six workmen in plain denim coveralls, quietly unloading the enormous wooden crate with the stenciled label: Ghost Zone Missile.

* * *

_Author's note: What's new here? Just about everything, I think. The main thrust of this scene is to lock those doors, since they didn't get locked in the teaser. And I always enjoy giving Tucker something useful to do. _

_Note that even though I have introduced the Ghost Zone Missile, I still have not identified the Guys in White as the purchasers of the house. But thanks to those security cameras, the agents will soon know that the kids are responsible for that lock._

_Little things: I brought the "World's Greatest Mom" coffee cup back into the story. Why not? _


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode "Livin' Larger," which was written by Mark Drop.

**Act I, Scene 3**

As the sun rose the next morning over Condescension Lane, the bucolic tranquility was pierced by a screaming whine, somewhat reminiscent of a dentist's drill—if the dentist were five hundred feet tall. Alone in his marble-lined dining room, Vlad looked up from his soft boiled egg, put down his spoon and sneered, "Didn't take you too long to get started, did it Jack?"

Meanwhile, inside the billiards room-turned-laboratory in the basement of FentonWorks II, Jack carefully centered the tip of reality drill in the hexagonal frame of the new Fenton Ghost Portal. The powerful instrument, which was delicate and precise despite being the size of a small elephant, brought back fond memories of that cool September day five years earlier, when he and Maddie had begun work on the world's first artificial portal through the barrier between dimensions, in the basement of their... um, their previous home.

This one would be better, of course. They had learned so much in the last few years, and the conditions here in Porter Heights were ideal for drilling. Five years ago he and Maddie had been just a couple of dreamers, two renegade scientists in a disregarded specialty, with nothing but a wild hypothesis and a prototype reality drill. Colleagues had laughed at them, universities had ignored them, foundations had rejected every grant application. But who had the last laugh? FentonWorks had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and now they had more than enough money to live in the lap of luxury and continue their research in style!

Just as he was prepared to bring the drill-head into contact with the surface of the wall, Maddie came down the stairs with a cup of coffee, a platter of pastries and a puzzled look. Jack beamed at his wife and gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up, pleased as punch to have her at his side as he began work on the new and improved Fenton Ghost Portal Mark-II. But she just frowned and bellowed, "I THINK I LEFT MY 'WORLD'S GREATEST MOM' COFFEE MUG BACK AT THE OLD HOUSE!"

"WHAT!?"

"I SAID, I THINK I—"

Jack shut down the drill and pulled out one of his earplugs.

"—LEFT MY... uh, my 'World's Greatest Mom' coffee mug back at the old house." She glanced wistfully at the delicate china cup in her hand, with its painted sprays of rosebuds and tasteful band of 24-karat gold. "You know, the one Danny gave me for Mother's Day a few years back. I really loved that mug."

"Don't worry, Maddiekins, I'll get you a new one. We can even promote you to 'Universe's Greatest Mom' if you want." He gingerly removed the steaming cup of coffee from her hand and set it on the nearest workbench, then took her hands and gave her a spin that ended in a graceful, deep dip. "I'll buy you the whole factory, if you fancy some Chinese real estate. Just say the word, and it's yours!"

Maddie gave her husband a kiss before extricating herself from his arms. "You're so sweet, you know that? For a total nutcase, you're just too sweet for words."

"Speaking of sweet and nutty..." He grabbed two sticky buns, one in each hand, and started munching. "Mmmmmph..."

"But I don't want a new mug," Maddie added, with just a touch of regret. "I just— I don't know, I just think I'm going to miss some of our old stuff. And I know we can buy new stuff, even better stuff, but it just isn't the same."

"Uh...hello?" The voice seemed tinny and distant. Maddie and Jack were instantly alert—Jack even put down his sticky buns and peered around the lab suspiciously. The voice continued, "Anybody down there?"

"Jazzy-pants! Where are you?"

"Jack!" Maddie grabbed him by the elbow and pointed at the wall above the work bench. "She's on the video intercom. See?"

"Whoa. Heh, heh, I didn't even know we had one of those puppies."

"This house is perfect!" Jazz exulted, once her parents were in pick-up range. "Did you know my bedroom opens right into a fully-stocked library!?"

"Well, of course it does, honey!" said Maddie. "You need to start working on your independent advanced-placement baccalaureate diploma course of study if you're going to start college in the fall."

"Count on it!" she bubbled enthusiastically. "In fact, tell Pierre I'll take my lunch up here in the stacks. I'll be in Natural Sciences, between Celestial Mechanics and Ephemera. Jazz Out."

The screen went blank, and the two doting parents grinned at each other for a moment. Then Jack started punching at the intercom's controls. "One of these has to be Danny's room..." The images on the screen jumped rapidly from one channel to the next: formal dining room, parlor, ballroom, salon, conservatory, morning room, sun room, study, master suite, Danny's room—

"You are going down, dude!"

—Jazz's room, library... Jack took his thumb off the fast-forward and hit the back button twice to return to the view of Danny's room. All they could see was that his bed was tidy, but the desperate urgency in Danny's voice was clear.

"Nngh! Take that! There's no way I'm letting you get away with—"

"Danny's being attacked!" Jack shouted. "Hang in there, son, we'll be right there!" Maddie was already halfway up the stairs, and he was right on her heels.

_Author's note: I tried to deepen the emotional tone of this scene: Jack's immense pride in his work, Maddie's wistful longing for the coffee mug she left behind, their deep affection for one another. One of my goals in this project is to shift the episode's theme from "sudden wealth turns the Fentons into shallow jerks" to "sudden wealth can't make the Fentons any happier than they already were." _

_Jazz isn't just wandering around in that library of hers (which is next door to her room, not inside it); she's doing her schoolwork. I used the video intercom system to transition into the next scene, where Danny is (of course) perfectly safe, playing a video game. _

_Little things: I removed some of the silly-season stuff, the stack of money to prop up the wobbly desk and the Matter-Fasher by Ghostco. Jazz wants Pierre (not Hobson) to deliver her lunch to the library. In my version of the story, Hobson is not the butler. __Why? Stay tuned!_


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode "Livin' Large" by Mark Drop.

* * *

**Act I, Scene 4**

Maddie and Jack crept along the upstairs hallway, trying to keep their footfalls silent as they listened anxiously to the sounds of battle emanating from the last bedroom on the left: grunts, body blows, even the faint echoes of... witty banter? They took their positions braced against the wall on either side of the door, then Maddie spun around kicked the door down with a resounding war cry, and they burst into the room one after the other.

"Ha! No cop's ever caught Mug-Ro! You think you're gonna be the first?" Danny leaned over to his left, tilting his game chair at a precarious angle as the muscle-bound Neanderthal on the plasma screen gave a hapless police officer a vicious kick in the chest before leaping into the driver's seat of a tricked-out classic GTO. The sound of the car's souped-up engine, fed through the thirty-six-inch woofers of the room's massive speaker towers, shook the house to its foundations; the screaming squeal of virtual tires on virtual pavement set Maddie's teeth on edge.

"YEEEEEE-AAAAAHHHHHHH!" Danny cried, leaning back in the game chair with the imagined force of zero-to one-twenty-seven in less than three seconds.

"Danny!" Jack paused, then repeated, "DANNY!"

Maddie took a different approach, yanking the audio-output cable from the back of the chair, plunging the room into silence just as Jack jumped between Danny and the car chase on his video monitor—face stern, hands on his hips.

**DANNY!!!**"

"Hey, get out of the way! I'll never get the double-horsepower bonus if I can't see where I'm going!"

Jack grabbed Danny by the shoulders and lifted him from the chair, setting him down on the floor with his back to the screen. Maddie was on him like a prosecutor. "It is eight o'clock on a school day, young man, which means you should be hard at your studies. Where is Mr. Hobson?"

Danny's guilty glance across the room was answer enough. The tutor was in the study nook on the opposite side of the room, seated in Danny's ergonomic Aeron Chair, slumped over on the desk, for all outward appearances fast asleep. Maddie groaned and rolled her eyes. "Daniel James Fenton, you have been telling us for years how much you hate going to school every day. And you could be sitting right now in a crowded classroom in a poorly-funded public school—" she added, as she strode across the room to the tutor's rescue, "—dodging bullies and hiding from ghosts and struggling to keep up your grades in the clutches of an uncaring bureaucracy—" she pulled up the back of the tutor's black suit coat and reached for its control panel, "—instead of receiving the finest automated individualized instruction available from the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. And instead you're wasting your time playing a silly video game?"

"Bleep!" answered the robotic tutor, as its system began to reboot.

"Silly? Are you kidding me? This is _Caveman Auto Thief!_" Danny whined. "And... it's rated E."

"Educational?" Maddie asked, suspiciously.

"Er... um, no. Entrails."

"Really?" Jack leapt into the game chair and grabbed the controls, sending the speeding muscle car careening into a pair of police cruisers. "Wow, that's gotta be cool!"

"JACK!"

"Er— I mean, this is a _totally_ inappropriate activity for school hours, young man. There'll be plenty of time to play games after you've finished your school work... right, Maddiekins?" He reluctantly turned off the display and powered down the game chair.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hobson had finished its boot-up routine and recovered the files that were lost when it had been unceremoniously shut down. It stood up, smoothed its rumpled suit coat with grave dignity, and offered Danny a patient half-smile. "...page thirty-seven in your Geometry text, we will endeavor to explore the practical applications of complementary and supplementary angles." The robot's cultured Oxford accent was calm and composed, its long, narrow face and basset-hound eyes not showing any sign that it was even aware of being inactivated. "Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton. Thank you for joining us for Daniel's mathematics lesson. You are most welcome to observe his progress at any time, of course..."

"Thank you, Mr. Hobson," Maddie replied warmly, "but Jack and I were just leaving. We just wanted to remind Danny here just how lucky he is to receive such excellent personalized instruction." She gave her son a stern glare. "Right, Sweetie?"

Danny sighed, temporarily defeated. "Right." He pasted a frozen smile on his face until his parents left the room, then reluctantly returned to his desk and turned his attention to his textbook. Mr. Hobson paced back and forth behind Danny's back, expounding on the measurement of angles at the intersection of two lines, occasionally leaning over Danny's shoulder to sketch a diagram in his notebook. Danny tried to follow, but as usual it was an uphill slog.

"So… if this angle is thirty degrees, then this one has to be… um…uh..." Danny pointed at the large, narrow "X" Hobson had drawn. "Sixty?"

"Not quite. How did you reach that answer, Daniel?"

Danny bit his lip. "Um… ninety minus thirty. Right? No—wait a minute, a straight line isn't ninety, it's one-eighty. One-eighty minus thirty is… one-fifty."

"Excellent." The tutor clapped Danny firmly on the shoulder. "The supplementary angle is one hundred-fifty degrees. Well done, well done. Now, building on that knowledge, please complete exercises one through twenty on page thirty-nine."

Danny turned the page and started answering the questions, scribbling subtraction problems in the margin of his notebook while Hobson paced silently behind him. He was starting to get a handle on the concept, but the repetition was boring and his mind quickly began to wander. The sound of his cell phone ringing was a welcome interruption, and he immediately dropped his pencil and pulled the phone out of his pocket.

"Daniel," Hobson said wearily, eyes half-closed as though it were focused on accessing a disciplinary sub-routine. "I must remind you that utilizing electronic communication devices during your classroom hours detracts from your quality education experience and is in direct violation of your personalized study proto—"

The robot never even saw Danny disappear. It simply stopped speaking in mid-sentence and pitched headfirst onto the bed, twitching a couple of times before lying still. Danny turned visible, floating above the bed as he smoothed the robot's coat over its control panel. He patted it apologetically on its pale fringe of plastic hair before answering the phone. "Hey, Tuck!"

"Danny. I can't believe you ditched school today. We have a geometry test, man!"

He laughed. "You got it all wrong! I'm not ditching school, I'm out of school altogether. Me and Jazz are going to be home schooled, can you believe it?"

"But we—"

"I got this high-tech robot tutor, like some old British guy. Weird, huh? It's totally geared to my needs, my interests, my abilities. All custom-made, just for me. And the best thing? No more Dash Baxter! And no more detention, and no more cafeteria food—"

"What about 'no more Sam and Tucker'?"

Danny could detect the strain in Tucker's voice. "Hey! We're still friends, even if we don't see each other at school any more. We'll just do stuff together outside of school. Right? Like, you guys can come over sometime and play _Caveman Auto Thief!_"

"Well, maybe tomorrow. This afternoon we're gonna check out what's going on over at the old FentonWorks. Sam went by there this morning and saw all kinds of trucks and stuff coming and going—totally suspicious. We gotta find out what Vlad's up to."

"Why? Without the portal, that house is just another old house. Vlad can have it, for all the good it's gonna do him. And with that lock on the portal, there's going to be a lot fewer 'unwanted visitors' around here—so it's a win-win. Maybe now I can kick back and lead a more normal life."

"Dude. You call that 'normal'?"

"Well... okay. A bit better than just normal. You were right, Tuck—looks like I got it made!"

Tucker sighed. "So are you going to come do reconnaissance with me and Sam this afternoon, or not?"

Danny went back to his desk and pulled a leather-bound Day Planner from the top-left drawer. "Hang on... let me see... Uh, no. Can't. I have a riding lesson at three and we're checking out the new yacht at five so I gotta clean up and get dressed in time to get down to the marina. No time for paranoid ghostiness tonight, sorry!"

Danny could hear the second period bell ringing in the background. Tucker sighed. "I guess _one_ of us has to go take that geometry test. Wish me luck, okay?"

"All the luck in the world, Tuck." Danny ended the call and tucked the phone back in his pocket, then headed back to the bed to reactivate his new teacher. For a moment, he let his hand hover tentatively above Hobson's back. He glanced over his shoulder at the clock on the wall over the desk: eight-twenty. The red hand slowly ticked off the seconds: thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine...

"Got the whole darned day to learn geometry," he muttered. "A few more minutes of down-time won't hurt anything." He left Hobson on the bed and booted up his game chair instead, resetting the game but wisely leaving the sound cable disconnected. Mug-Ro shimmered to life on the plasma screen, glowering menacingly at the long line of parked cars. He considered the GTO, the tomato-red Ferrari, the sleek black BMW, the silver Hummer. But his eyes lit up when he spotted the Harley Davidson at the end of the row.

Oh, this was going to be _awesome_.

* * *

_**Author's Note: **__ The big change is, of course, Hobson's role as a robotic tutor, one of two robots who will appear in this story. (The other will be neither a Tucker-bot nor a Sam-bot.) I was seriously bothered by Hobson's role in the episode, both as subservient foil to Danny's arrogant behavior and as the voice of wisdom who manages to steal the most important speech in the entire episode. One of my primary objectives is to increase the interactions among major characters, so Hobson's role must be reduced. _

_Of course, I can also increase interactions among major characters by having Jack and Maddie visit their son in this scene. Of course, they're still committed to his education— it's implausible that they would leave him to goof off on a school day. So in my version of the tale Danny is being home-schooled, even as Jazz is completing her high school education in an independent course of study. _

_A vital change in this scene is to tone down Danny's arrogant behavior, as part of an overall attempt to shift the story's theme from "sudden wealth turns the Fentons into shallow jerks" to "sudden wealth can't make the Fentons any happier than they already were." His conversation with Tucker reveals that he is glad to be free from Casper High, but it's pretty clear that he's not altogether happy about being stuck with Hobson, either. And the wonderful opportunities of his new life are going to make it hard to spend time with his friends. _

_Little things: the game Danny is playing at the beginning of the scene is_ Caveman Auto Thief_ (rated E for Entrails), which is nothing like the game Danny appeared to be playing with Hobson in the actual episode. And of course, he's playing alone. Also, if Danny's going to live out some sort of adolescent motorcycle fantasy in this story, it's going to be in the video game, not in the ghost zone. He can fly faster than Johnny 13's bike, for pity's sake!_

* * *

_Several reviewers have commented on the shortness of the chapters in this story. I agree that they are very short— even for me— but in this case the brevity is intentional. In the spirit of Firefury's challenge, I am trying very hard to keep my revision in the same 22-minute format as the original episode. These are not "chapters" so much as "scenes," and the scenes in a well-written Danny Phantom episode are often very short indeed!_

_Deepest thanks to all my reviewers. I'm honored that you're staying with me on this project. You're almost "caught up" with me now, which means the updates are going to be less frequent going forward. But this project is outlined all the way to the bitter end, so stay tuned! _

_ Bluemoonalto _


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode "Livin' Large" by Mark Drop.

**Scene 5**

"Give me some room," Sam warned, as she gathered up the rope in neat loops. Tucker backed up a few steps as she began to swing the grappling hook in ever-larger circles, until she built up enough momentum to fling it skyward. She'd judged her throw well; the hook crashed through Danny's old bedroom window on the second floor and lodged tightly against the frame as she tugged the rope firmly and gave a satisfied nod. "We're in."

She scrambled up the rope quickly. Tucker couldn't climb as fast, but he _could_ climb—a skill he owed to Sam's diligent (if somewhat callous) coaching. When he reached the windowsill Sam grabbed him by the wrists and pulled him in.

Danny's room was just as it had been when he lived there; NASA posters on the wall, half-finished school projects on the desk, dirty clothes piled up on the floor within a neat circle around the clothes hamper. It was hard to believe he had been plucked from his former life so completely as to leave a Danny-shaped hole behind.

"He should be here," whispered Tucker.

Sam closed her eyes and clenched her jaw, but said nothing.

They crept down the stairs to the deserted living room, which was littered with the remains of a large, wooden crate. There was nobody in sight, but they could hear voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. Two voices, from the sound of it, but too faint to make out any specific words. They worked their way cautiously through the dining room to the kitchen doorway, where Sam peeked around the corner and confirmed that the kitchen was empty—the voices were coming from the lab. Tucker nudged Sam and pointed toward the pantry, which they knew (from years of experience) had a heating duct that made it a perfect listening post for little kids to spy on the mysterious goings-on in the lab. Sam nodded approvingly and they made a quick dash for the pantry.

Once Tucker pulled the door almost closed behind them, the tiny room was plunged into darkness. There was barely enough room for the them both to sit on the floor, and it took a few moments of tense but silent negotiation to determine who would put whose feet where. (It had been so much easier for the three of them to hide in here when they were little.) Sam gritted her teeth and thought resentfully that if Danny had been there, he would have provided some light simply by glowing. Then again, if Danny had been there, they wouldn't have had to climb up a rope to get inside, and they wouldn't have had to skulk around the house on foot. They could have phased directly into the lab, floating invisibly and observing without all this stupid effort.

"Blast!" It was a man's voice, deep and very irritated. "Those devious little brats must have anticipated this, there's a fail-safe programmed into the lock. If I disconnect it, or try to bypass the security code, we're going to be locked out _permanently_."

Sam squeezed Tucker's hand in the dark. She was smiling, and she assumed he was, too.

"Absolutely unacceptable." The second voice was even deeper and at least three times more irritated. "That door must be opened as soon as possible. If you can't bypass the lock, you're going to have to crack the password."

The first voice replied, "Do you have any idea how long that could take? There are nearly an infinite number of combinations, because we don't even know the number of characters."

"So, stop whining and get busy! Review the security tapes and see if you can count the kid's keystrokes. Guys in White don't accept failure as an option—you must open the Fenton Portal so we can fire the Anti-Ecto Missile and destroy the entire Ghost Zone!"

In their listening post in the darkened pantry, Sam and Tucker gasped.

**End Act I**

_Author's Note: Not much of a change here. Sam and Tucker started their infiltration of the house from the ground rather than from the roof, because neither one of them can fly. (Well, duh!) They listened to the conversation without being able to see who was speaking, because there's no logical place on the ground floor of FentonWorks for such a viewing place to be. _

_Yes, I know this scene is quite short. It was even shorter in the episode! The action actually continues after the commercial break, as Act II, Scene I, which I'll post tomorrow. Think of it as... a very long commercial break. _

_So far, I've found this project to be a bit harder than I expected it would be. I was boiling over with ideas at first, but making them all fit together and keeping them at episode length has been a real challenge. I've had to rely a little more on introspection than I would be able to if this were to be filmed. I've also relied somewhat on the reader's ability to visualize elements from the show—like Danny's high-tech game chair, or the reality drill—without describing them in great detail._

_Certain details have been or will be discarded. There will be no Tucker-bot or Sam-bot, and Danny will not be hijacking Johnny 13's bike. I am trying to find ways to honor the spirit of the original despite the edits, for example by including other robots, or by giving Danny a brief motorcycle fantasy at the end of scene 4. I also brought up Maddie's coffee mug and the sticky pink goo in other contexts. _

_I also worry that this is coming out in my own style, which is more serious and less playful than the show. Elements like Danny's need to be in school definitely come from my own preference for realism. _

_How am I doing so far?_


	7. Chapter 7

Did you enjoy the commercial break? Welcome back, here's the second half of that scene.

**Act II Scene 1**

Down in the lab, Agent Wye glared at the blast doors of the Fenton Portal, which stubbornly remained closed; he took a deep breath and swore, "We will achieve the total destruction of the Ghost Zone. No more security breaches at the inter-dimensional boundary, no more undocumented specters, and best of all—no more annoying Phantom Kid!"

Meanwhile, upstairs in the pantry, Sam opened the door a crack and grabbed Tucker's shoulder, pulling him away from their listening post by the heating vent. He scrambled to his feet and followed her across the kitchen, glancing up for the first time to see the miniature security camera staring back at him. It was mounted on bracket above the back door— how had he missed it before? There wasn't time to dwell on it. They just dashed for the door and kept running until they had put most of a city block between themselves and the house.

Tucker finally pulled to a stop, leaning against a brick wall in an alley and gasping for breath. "I don't… get it. Why would... Vlad be in cahoots... with the Guys in White?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Sam pointed out sourly. She slowed to a walk, but refused to stop just because Tucker was winded. "Remember when he had the Nasty Burger demolished because of an 'ecto-infestation'?"

"Right." Tucker pushed away from the wall and jogged a few steps to catch up. "For that matter, Vlad's the mayor of the most haunted city in the US— he probably has the Guys in White on his speed dial. But why would he bring them in to destroy the whole Ghost Zone?"

"Who cares? Maybe he double-crossed some ghost. Or some ghost double-crossed him. Or maybe he woke up with a tummy ache and only some wholesale mayhem will make it all better. The point is, what are we going to do about it?"

"I don't see what we can do!" Tucker pleaded. "The lock's gonna hold for a while, maybe even a week or two, but any password can be cracked eventually."

"Not good enough. We have to stop this. We're not just talking about destruction, after all, we're talking about mass murder. And not just the bad ghosts, the nasty ghosts, the evil ghosts— if they really do have a weapon that can destroy the Ghost Zone, they're_all_ gone." Sam stopped short and grabbed Tucker by the collar, hauling him forward until they were nose to nose. "Wulf. Dora. Frostbite. Pay attention, Tucker, even Clockwork! It's genocide, Tucker._ We have to stop this!_"

"Correction," Tucker said quietly. "_Danny _has to stop this."

_Author's Note: One of the many things that bothered me about the original episode was that nobody seemed consider how the destruction of the Ghost Zone would affect the ghosts who live there. Whether they're the spirits of the dead or just a collection of weird monsters, the ghosts of _Danny Phantom_ are very much like people, and the Ghost Zone is their world. I hesitated to introduce the loaded word "genocide" into this children's story, but then I'm not the one who threatened to destroy the Ghost Zone. I'm just calling it like it is. _

_The extent of Tucker's intelligence and scientific knowledge varies greatly from episode to episode. I decided to move the "alternate plane of existence" conversation to later in the episode, and leave the advanced theoretical physics to the actual scientists. It just seemed to me that the thought of mass murder would have more immediate impact._

_Little things: In the episode, this conversation took place in that odd little overlook, where Sam and Tucker could have been easily overheard by the Guys in White. I can't tell whether Mark Drop intended to make a sly reference to illegal immigration ("undocumented specters") but I enjoyed adding a reference to inter-dimensional Border Security. _


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode _Livin' Large _by Mark Drop.

**Act II, Scene 2**

"Jazzy-pants, would you please pass the salt?"

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"THE SALT!" Jack called. "PLEASE!"

"SURE THING, DAD!" Jazz picked up the silver salt cellar and handed it to the liveried footman who appeared instantly at her side. The servant nodded gravely and made a smart left turn, walking slowly and deliberately the length of the table to hand it to Jack, who was just digging into his third helping of chateaubriand, mushroom risotto and fresh garden peas.

The formal dining room was designed to seat thirty guests in comfort, and could squeeze in up to fifty in a pinch. Its heavily carved mahogany table was custom built for the room, complemented by a massive Italian marble fireplace, twinkling crystal chandeliers, six floor-to-ceiling gilded mirrors and a sixteenth-century Flemish sideboard. The table was richly furnished with a brocaded red and gold tablecloth, exquisite floral arrangements and candelabra, and was set for four. Jack presided at the head of the table, Maddie sat nearly fifty feet away at the foot, with Jazz and Danny on opposite sides of the table midway between, effectively separated from each other by a tall centerpiece of lilies, gladiolas, gilded apples and pears, and an antique Chinese birdcage full of tiny, twittering finches.

As Jack tucked into his third serving, more servants appeared and silently whisked empty dishes away from the other places. Jazz, whose job it had always been to clear the table after supper, picked up her plate and glass and began to stand up; the butler rushed to her side, snatched the dishes from her hands and gave a slight frown of disapproval, as though to gently remind her of proper etiquette.

"Sorry, Barnes." Jazz blushed and sank quietly back into her chair.

The butler sniffed, then replied with dignity and just a touch of reproach, "Not at all, Miss."

At that moment, the kitchen door opened and Chef Pierre Pretentieux waddled into the dining room, his starched white tunic, apron and toque rustling slightly with every rolling step. He struck a dignified pose precisely five feet to Maddie's left and folded his chubby hands across his ample stomach, his cherubic little smile and twinkling eyes peeking out from the folds of fat on his glistening face. He beamed proudly and gushed, "Ah, I tink you ave enjoyed ze suppair, _n'est pas_?"

From the opposite end of the room, Jack looked up and answered without quite bothering to swallow first, "Ish good grub, Pierre! Real good grub!" He dropped his fork and knife with a clatter and gave the chef an enthusiastic double thumbs-up.

Maddie flashed Jack a withering glance, then added, "Oh yes,Pierre. The meal was exquisite, you've pleased us very much. _ Merci beacoup_."

"Zen you would lahk to ave some dezzairt, certainly? I ave prepared a ceenamon apple tart een a butter ahlmond crust, with a touch of _creme fraiche_ _et_ joost a dreezle of caramel. Yes?"

"Yes, that would be lov—"

"DANNY!" Sam and Tucker burst wildly into the room, breathless and disheveled, as though pursued by the devil himself. Sam continued, "We have to talk to you, _in private_, right now!"

There was an awkward moment, with all the players frozen in place: Jack's fork halfway to his mouth, Chef Pierre's pink face set in startled astonishment, Barnes' pinched, patrician nose quivering with offense, Sam and Tucker flooded with self-consciousness at the sight of the formal dining room and all the assembled servants. Danny squirmed in his chair, suddenly unsure how to react.

Maddie smiled indulgently. "Hi there, kids!" Suddenly aware of the pained expressions all around, she quickly added, "Uh... Danny? Why don't we have dessert served for you and your friends up in your room?"

The chef and the butler both relaxed visibly and nodded their approval.

Danny brightened, relieved to be released from the constrictions of the formal meal. He jumped up and tossed his linen napkin onto the table. "Yeah, that would be great! Hey Pierre, think could you whip up some of those awesome milkshakes? This time, let's try... kiwi-fudge."

"Kiwi... fudge?" The chef hesitated, then continued hopefully. "Pairhaps your friends would prefair someting more... traditional, sooch as vaneella, or strawberry...?"

"How about Cheez Puffs and bacon?" Tucker prompted enthusiastically, earning a swift look of nauseous disgust from the chef.

"Strawberry would be fine, but with soy milk please!" Sam added quickly, then grabbed Danny by the hand and practically dragged him out of the room, just a few steps behind Tucker. The three teens thundered through the foyer, up the grand staircase and along the main corridor on the second floor to Danny's room at the far end. Tucker was first through the door and immediately tripped headlong over a long wooden crate that had been placed right in the middle of the floor.

"Whoa!" Danny skidded to a stop, grabbing Sam's arm as he fought to regain his balance. "Who put that there?"

"A crate?" Tucker gasped, still sprawled out on the floor, patting the carpet around him to find his glasses. "Hey, there was a great big crate in the living room back at FentonWorks, too. Maybe this is another anti-ecto weapon, or a booby-trap, or—"

"—or a shipment from the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation." Sam added dryly, reading the shipping label. She peered more closely and added, "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With."

"No way!" Danny squeaked. "It's here _already_? Awesome!" He fell to his knees and quickly pried the crate's lid open, tossing it to the side and then tipping the crate over to spill out a mountain of plastic packing peanuts onto the floor along with a limp figure dressed in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. Danny brushed a layer of packing peanuts off the figure's back and found the control panel under its shirt. The creature jerked to life, rolled over and sat straight up, shaking a shower of Styrofoam pellets from its mop of black hair.

"Danny..." Tucker breathed. "It's... it's you!"

The robot slowly opened its blue eyes and beeped.

Danny stood up and backed away a few feet, watching with wonder and immense pride as his new toy booted up. "It's a Danny-bot X7. Absolutely state-of-the-art electro-mechanical simulacrum. Cool, huh?"

Tucker scooted over to peer closely at the android, which eventually turned its head and stared right back. After a few seconds of quiet observation and contemplation, it solemnly intoned, "Tucker Foley, best friend. Sam Manson," it continued, turning to stare at her, "also best friend. This is a logical contradiction..."

"Deal with it," Danny laughed.

If a robot could sigh, Danny-bot probably would have. "Of course, as you wish."

Tucker's mouth hung open with amazement and awe. "It's like... the ultimate achievement of technology... the perfect blending of man and machine—"

"No it's not!" insisted Sam. "It doesn't look anything like Danny. The hair's all wrong, and the voice is off, and the nose is too big, and Danny does _not_ have rivets in his cheeks! Although," she added thoughtfully, "now that I think about it..."

"But... what's it for?" Tucker asked quickly, before she could finish that thought. "What do you need another you for?"

Danny chuckled with glee. "Officially, it's a companion, programmed with the skills and rules for seventy-five different sports and games. So I have an opponent if I ever want to play tennis, or pool, or some one-on-one hoops. If the parents ask, that's the story and I'm sticking with it. Unofficially, Danny-bot's here to take my place if I ever need to—"

"—go ghost?" Sam jumped in eagerly.

Danny paused, a puzzled look passing across his face. "Um... yeah, I guess so. That too. Though I don't think that's going to be much of a problem any more, with the Portal all sealed up. What I was going to say was, he'll take my place if I ever need to duck out of school." He grabbed the robot by the elbow, led it over to the desk and sat it down in his chair. "Do you have any idea how mind-numbingly tedious it can be to spend eight hours a day listening to the same teacher drone on, and on, and on? One teacher who never gets tired, who never deviates from its programmed lesson plan, with just the two of you in the room and nobody else to talk to? Danny-bot here can sit in for me if I need to escape from the old brain-wash now and then."

"Awesome!" Tucker crowed. "Man, I gotta get me one of those. It's like having a 'Get Out of School Free' card!"

"Forget school!" Sam waived her hands to get the boys' attention. "Hello? Bigger problems? Guys in White, honking big anti-ecto missile?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You've got Guys in White down in the lab at FentonWorks!" she cried, in that special voice she used for her most aggrieved issues and beloved causes. "They must be working for Vlad, setting up some kind of super weapon that's designed to destroy the entire Ghost Zone. _The entire Ghost Zone_, Danny! Do you get what that means?"

"I guess that means..." he answered with mock earnestness, "...the_entire _Ghost Zone. Or am I missing something?"

"Hey man, this isn't a joke." Tucker glanced over at Sam, who was just starting to work her way up to a full boil. "They're gonna fire a missile into the Ghost Zone through the Fenton Portal, just as soon as they can get it open. You gotta do something to stop them, or it's going to be total destruction. Mass murder! The end of—"

"Relax!" Danny said cheerfully. "We put a lock on the Portal, right? So there's nothing to worry about— everything's under control. They are _never_ going to figure out that password, believe me."

Sam rolled her eyes. "It's not 'PaulinaFenton,' is it?"

"What? No!" Danny actually blushed. "Of course not. That was way too easy. Nobody's gonna figure this password out in a million years, I swear."

Tucker was somewhat mollified, but Sam was still building up a head of steam. "That's not good enough!" she yelled, grabbing Danny roughly by the shoulders and giving him a not-so-gentle shake. The fact that he just grinned back at her made her even more angry. "Have you forgotten who you are? You are Danny Phantom, you have all these amazing powers, and that means you have responsibilities. You can't just sit back and let Vlad and the Guys in White get away with all this stuff!"

"Oh yeah? Watch me!" Danny pulled away from Sam and jumped onto his bed, lying down with his hands behind his head. "As far as I can see, nobody's getting away with anything. The Guys in White are stuck on this side, all the ghosts are stuck on the other side, and I'm just starting to enjoy not having to play hero all the time. And if you can't be happy for me, then maybe you should just go deal with this so-called crisis yourself!"

"All right!" Sam stamped one heavy boot, spun around and grabbed Tucker by the hand, dragging him toward the door. "If that's the way you want it, we will! Somebody has to behave responsibly around here, and not just sit around looking for new and more expensive ways to goof off!"

They barely missed crashing into the butler as they rounded the corner into the hallway; Barnes just managed to sidestep and keep control of the tray of milkshakes he was balancing on his left hand. Astonished, he watched the two teens tear down the hallway toward the stairs, then shook his head with patient disapproval as he stepped into the young master's room.

"I take it your young friends were called away?" he said coolly, without missing a beat. "Such a shame they couldn't stay for dessert. I'll take these back to the kit—"

Danny laughed and bounced up from the bed to grab two tall glasses from the tray. "Heck no. Leave 'em here with me, I won't let 'em go to waste. In fact, I think I'll have my own private taste test." He took a long slurp from the glass in his left hand, then sampled the one on the right for contrast. "Hmmmm. There's a touch of maple flavor in the bacon..."

* * *

_Author's Note: This should actually be counted as two scenes, but the action flowed so smoothly from dining room to bedroom that I couldn't bear to put a chapter break in the middle. The first part is 100 new, of course, except for the mention of the unusual milkshake flavors. I wanted to show the Fentons having a touch of difficulty adapting to their new lives, while also showing that bigger (and more expensive) isn't always better. _

_Once Sam and Tucker arrive on the scene, we come much closer to canon. The original scene did a crude but effective job illustrating the "sudden wealth turns Danny into a shallow jerk" theme, but my version of the episode has a different theme. So I softened Danny's offensive behavior while still trying to keep his devil-may-care attitude toward dealing with the Guys in White. _

_I had resolved from the very start to get rid of the Sam-bot and Tucker-bot, which were the most cringe-worthy elements in the original episode. The very thought that Danny would replace his best friends with robots, with the intention of punching one while enjoying worshipful adoration from the other, was offensive in the extreme. _

_Of course there had to be a Danny-bot, for the sake of series continuity. There must be a robot available to stand in for Danny in_ Phantom Planet_— and how completely implausible is it that either Jack or Maddie would be fooled by a Tucker-bot in a white and red t-shirt? _

_Little things: I kept the joke about the cheek rivets; it was the best line of the entire episode. Danny did not reveal the password, so we know Tucker won't be able to carelessly let it slip later in the episode. I named the butler "Barnes" after a character in the TV series _Upstairs, Downstairs

_Did anybody recognize the slogan of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?_

_And finally: My apologies for the French spelling errors; this site couldn't seem to handle accent marks.   
_


	9. Chapter 9

**Act II, Scene 3**

Looking back at it later, with all the benefits of hindsight, Sam would admit that leaving a rope hanging from Danny's bedroom window overnight probably wasn't one of her brightest ideas. And coming back less than a day later to shinny up that same rope into a house full of federal agents was just piling one blunder on top of another. But that's exactly what she and Tucker did, bright and early the next morning, and the Guys in White were waiting for them in Danny's bedroom.

"They couldn't arrest us down on the ground?" Tucker grumbled under his breath as he raised his hands in surrender. "No, they had to let us climb all the way up to the second floor, and _then_ arrest us. This is so not fair!"

Sam shot him a warning look, then turned her attention to the man who had identified himself as Senior Sector Supervising Special Agent Wye, a burly giant whose gleaming white suit strained to contain his muscular frame as he paced impatiently back and forth across the room. Behind him, in the doorway, a second agent casually toyed with some kind of miniature energy weapon about the size of a thumb drive. In fact, Sam mused, it might actually _be_ a thumb drive and not a weapon at all— but she was reluctant to test that theory. If it was a bluff, it was an effective one.

"We know you kids broke into this installation twice already." Agent Wye slammed one beefy fist into his other palm to punctuate his sentence. "Came back to commit some more sabotage, didn't you?"

"You guys got it all wrong!" Sam sidled over to Tucker and draped one arm across his shoulders, pulling him close. "We were just looking for some… you know, some privacy. Right? And the Fentons left all their stuff behind, so we thought…."

"Sa-a-am—" Tucker hissed under his breath. His shoulders had gone rigid under her touch, and he had broken out in a cold sweat.

"Shut it," she hissed back, then smiled sweetly and batted her eyelashes at the agents. "We thought, as long as there was nobody here, we could… you know…." Sensing a certain level of suspicion from Agent Wye and anxious to keep Tucker from bolting, she leaned over to nuzzle his ear—and whispered, "Just play along..."

"Oh yeah!" he burst out, startled and only barely keeping his panic in check. "We… um, we do that 'you know' stuff all the time. Because we're teenagers, and that's what teenagers do! You know…."

"STOP!" Agent Wye bellowed. "This building is now a Top Secret government installation, and that sort of 'you know' behavior is expressly forbidden by regulations 14-A subsection 7 and 23-C subsections 4, 5a and 5b. Kew—" he said, pointing at the agent in the doorway, "—cuff the lovebirds and take 'em upstairs. I want to see what progress Ecks has made with the security tapes."

With one fluid motion, Wye reached over his left shoulder and drew out his own weapon, which had been holstered in some sort of harness on his back and which could in no way be mistaken for a thumb drive. It was nearly the length of his arm, bristling with attachments, telescopic sights and sharp, pointy things, and it easily convinced the kids to hold still while Agent Kew handcuffed Tucker's left wrist to Sam's right. Once they were secured, Kew dragged them out into the hallway and led them stumbling up the narrow metal stairs to the Ops Center.

They found the familiar room bathed in shadows, the ring of windows tightly sealed with the armored hatches that were normally only used when the building was under attack. Sam struggled a bit while Agent Kew secured their handcuffs to a short chain suspended from a pipe near the ceiling, but soon both teens were left standing with one hand dangling in the air.

Tucker barely noticed; he was absorbed watching what was going on at the Command Desk on the opposite side of the room. A burly agent with a blond crew cut sat in Mr. Fenton's oversized chair, monitoring a bank of six ultra-light Sturdion ZL30 laptops, all of which seemed to be running identical random sequence generators at blazing speed. A 27-inch hi-def LCD video monitor flickered overhead, displaying a continuous ten-second loop of grainy, out-of-focus video of Danny standing with his back to the camera, typing and retyping the password. The back of the agent's white suit was damp with sweat and his hands seemed to tremble slightly as he scribbled notes on an_awesome_ 900 XG Radixx PDA with 2GB RAM/8GB ROM, LCD touch-screen, integrated Bluetooth/Wi-Fi, biometric security, and optional stereo speakers (not included).

"Agent Ecks!" bellowed Wye.

The agent nearly dropped his PDA as he jumped to his feet and saluted smartly. "Sir?"

"Let's have a progress report."

"Enhanced analysis of the security tape was inconclusive: the number of keystrokes in the password is between thirteen and fifteen. Which means there are more than two hundred sextillion possible sequences— even more if the password is case-sensitive."

Tucker's jaw dropped. Two hundred _sextillion_? That didn't even sound like a real number.

The agent continued, "We have six computers trying random sequences at a rate of 2,400 attempts per second, which is the max capacity of the kid's locking device." He threw Tucker a brief, irritated glance. "Any faster, and we risk tripping the failsafe and locking the doors permanently. Sir."

There was a long pause, during which Agent Wye's face registered a series of frowns and grimaces. Apparently he was trying to do the math— seconds per minute, minutes per hour, hours per day... and the answer was not coming out the way he wanted it to. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw for a few seconds, while the row of laptops on the desk tried and rejected another 38,400 possible passwords.

"Hey! You can't keep us here!" Sam protested, rattling the chain to get their attention. "I know my rights— I read a graphic novel version of the Constitution!"

"Yeah," Tucker added, with something less than rock-solid certainty. "You gotta _habeas_ our _corpus_..._ex post facto_... or something like that..."

Sam sighed.

Senior Sector Supervising Special Agent Wye spun on one heel and crossed the room in five long, impatient steps, then waved his finger just inches from Sam's nose and sneered, "I'll be sure to register your objection with the Attorney General. Seeing as how you're trespassing on secure government property, and seeing as how _you_—" he turned and pointed at Tucker, "—have already sabotaged sensitive government equipment, I'm sure your petition will get his closest attention. In the mean time," he added with sarcastic sweetness, "why don't you kids just tell us what your little friend used for a password?"

"Dude," Tucker said bitterly. "Why in the world would we do that?"

"Because we're the good guys! We wear white, remember?" The man attempted a brittle smile, but it faded quickly. "This is a vitally important, Top Secret mission involving National Security, so we have to get those Portal doors open as soon as possible. And there's nothing you meddling kids can do to stop us, so you might as well start cooperating!"

Tucker muttered under his breath, "Well, I've always wanted to be called a meddling kid."

"Great," Sam hissed back, rolling her eyes. "At least we accomplished something."

_Author's Note: The major change in this paragraph is that I have moved the interrogation up to the Ops Center. This is to resolve a nitpick in the original episode, which is that the launching of a missile would cause a huge ball of flaming gasses, making the lab a poor place for federal agents to work— much less keep a pair of hostages. _

_My goodness! That doesn't bode well for the lab, now does it?_

_Note that there is no conversation about the Ghost Zone Missile or the destruction of the Ghost Zone in this scene. Sam and Tucker don't know about the risk to our world yet, and the Guys in White are not likely to care about all the benevolent ghosts who would be killed— so there's no point in talking about it. _

_Sam's little variation on the Fake-Out Make-Out may seem like just a throw-away gag, but it actually will have a significant effect on the plot down the road. _

_Little things: I kept the line about the graphic novel version of the Constitution, which was the second-best line of the episode (after the cheek rivets). I had already shown Sam throwing the grappling hook back in Act I, so I had to take out the moment where her toss nails a Guy in White on the head. Tucker wasn't quite so inappropriately delighted about being called a meddling kid; here he made his comment with quiet irony rather than glee. The agents are Y (Wye), Q (Kew) and X (Ecks). _


	10. Chapter 10

**Act II, Scene 4**

Warm sunshine flooded through the bedroom window and bathed the study nook in light, as Danny floated invisibly near the ceiling above his bed and watched Hobson expound on the organization and structure of the Periodic Table of the Elements. The Danny-bot sat ramrod-straight in the Aeron chair, a pencil in its hand and an attitude of studious dedication in its bearing. Too studious, Danny thought to himself. He should probably ask Tucker to program the robot to slouch.

Satisfied that the two robots would get along just fine, he phased through the wall and touched down silently on the thick Turkish carpet in the hallway. For a while he just wandered aimlessly around the upper floors of the mansion, through spacious rooms that were still unfurnished but were fitted out with fine marble mantels, gold-plated fixtures and elaborate parquetry floors formed from rare tropical woods. Gradually it dawned on him that he didn't really have anything to do. His games, his tech, and his programmable "companion" were all still inside his room, out of reach. His real friends were in school, equally out of reach. Even the library was out of bounds, as that was Jazz's personal study space and there was no way he was going let her catch him goofing off during school hours.

One of the larger rooms on the back side of the house had a balcony overlooking the immaculately manicured lawn that stretched down a gentle slope toward the tennis courts. Sitting on the railing, contemplating the vast expanse of grass, Danny had a sudden flash of distant memory: rolling around on the tiny scrap of lawn behind FentonWorks and giggling with childish glee as his sister tried to teach him how to turn a proper somersault. How long ago was that? He briefly considered jumping down from the balcony just to roll around on that lush, thick turf, but then he noticed the elderly gardener trimming the topiary with a large pair of clippers. After every couple of snips the old man would pause to glance up at him with an expression of vague disapproval. Suddenly self-conscious, Danny slipped back into the house and closed the french doors behind him.

Eventually he worked his way downstairs, where the cold marble floor of the grand foyer made his footsteps echo in the heavy silence. In the conservatory he sat down at the grand piano and plunked out a couple rounds of _Chopsticks_ with two fingers. How strange, he thought, that his parents would have bothered buying a piano when nobody in the family knew how to play. Perhaps they had plans to buy him music lessons, to go along with the riding lessons and the dance lessons. Shuddering at the thought, he beat a hasty retreat through the ballroom into the formal dining room.

He wasn't alone. Jazz was already there, sitting quietly with her chin cupped in her left hand and her elbow on the table, poking a fork idly at a half-eaten slice of cake. Danny tried to creep away before she could notice him, but she looked up wearily and said, "Hey."

"What are you doing down here? I never expected to see you slacking."

"I'm not slacking!" she protested. "I'm just... decompressing. Clearing my mind."

"Staring into space, more like it." Danny's chair was on the opposite side of the table and he briefly considered walking all the way around so he could sit down, but he quickly changed his mind and hopped up to sit on the table instead. Barnes would probably have a cow, but at that moment Danny didn't particularly care.

Jazz pointed her fork at the rest of the cake, which was displayed on a silver stand on the antique Flemish sideboard. "Lemon Swirl Bundt Cake. Apparently it's some kind of 'welcome to the neighborhood' gift. You want a piece?"

"Nah," Danny sighed. "Don't seem to have much appetite."

"Me, neither." She shoved her plate away and leaned on her elbow again. There was a pause, during which the tall case clock in the foyer loudly ticked off the seconds. "What are you doing down here in the middle of the day, anyway?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be upstairs studying with Mr. Hobson?"

Danny glanced nervously off to the side before answering. "It's a... scheduled break. Like you said— decompressing."

"Hmmph. You never were a very good liar."

"Cut me some slack, will you? There's only so much 'Periodic Table' a guy can take, you know?"

"I thought Hobson was supposed to be a really good teacher?"

Danny shrugged. "I guess. It's all kind of boring, though. He talks, and talks, and talks, and I just sit there. It's weird, but I think I miss some of the little things about school— like the three and a half minutes between classes, when you have to shove your way through the mob in the hall just to get to your locker and then back to class. And sometimes you meet up with your friends, and get to talk for like fifteen seconds before you have to run. And then you have a different teacher next period, and different kids in the class, and different things on the walls to look at..."

Jazz picked up the flow of the conversation as Danny's thoughts trailed off. "Me, I miss the rhythm and flow of a really great lecture. The intellectual challenge of a vigorous debate. The give and take of ideas, the Socratic Method, the communal search for truth. You know what I mean?"

Danny shrugged. "I sort of miss Fish Stick Fridays. With those mini tater-tots..."

She shot him an aggravated look and he stuck out his tongue in reply.

"You know what I miss the most?" she asked.

"A freak like you? I don't know... homework?"

"It's_ all _homework now, isn't it? But no— it's being a peer counselor. Because school wasn't just about listening to lectures, or writing papers, or passing tests. I was actually _doing_ stuff. Really important stuff! I was helping people deal with stress, overcome fears, resolve conflicts... but I don't do that any more. I just sit alone up in that library and read and write, and read and write, and read and write..." She shook her head sadly. "What happened to me, Danny? What happened to _us_?"

"Heck if I know," he admitted, squirming uncomfortably.

"I mean, theoretically, I could spend every moment of every day studying, until I knew everything there is to know about every subject—"

"—and I could spend every moment of every day just goofing off and enjoying myself—"

"—but is that really what we're all about? Is there no higher purpose in life? I mean, I'm not just some kind of academic machine!"

"No way," Danny laughed. "You're a nosy, pushy, interfering busybody!"

"And proud of it." She grinned slyly, gently guiding him into her trap. "And you're not just some lazy, game-playing slacker—"

"No way!" he cried defiantly, even a bit defensively. Her choice of words had stung.

"No way," she echoed quietly, suddenly quite serious as she held his gaze. "You're a hero."

He returned the stare for a few seconds and his carefree grin slowly faded as the deeper meaning of their conversation gradually dawned on him. Finally, he glanced away and shook his head in resignation. He hopped down from the table, took a few steps toward the door, then glanced back with an expression of gratitude and perhaps just a little bit of respect.

"Peer counseling, huh?"

She blushed and shrugged, a smug little smile on her face. "It's just that thing I do."

He spun around and ran into the grand foyer, then made a joyous, wild leap— the kind he only ever made when he had no intention of coming back down again. Once free from gravity he made a spontaneous somersault in midair as the transformation rings swept across him from side to side. Turning his leap into true flight, he soared upward in a graceful spiral through the three-story foyer and out through the roof.

Jazz leaned against the dining room doorway, gazing up at the ceiling as though she could follow his flight in her mind's eye. And she would have stood there for quite a while, quietly contemplating her own life's trajectory, except at that exact moment the front door crashed from its hinges and two white-suited agents burst into the house with weapons drawn and charged.

"Freeze!"

* * *

_Author's Note: Whoa! What are they doing there?_

_As I have mentioned before, my first priority in making this revision was to increase the number of significant interactions among major characters. This was the scene that got the whole project rolling. From the very first time I saw the episode, this conversation grated on my nerves— because, no matter how well-written a character Hobson was, it was more important that Danny get this serious, important advice from somebody who knows him and loves him. _

_Note that Jazz is lonely and bored, too. All part of the new theme, in which the Fentons are not as happy in their new lives as they expected to be. I expanded the beginning of the scene in order to gradually establish Danny's boredom; in the episode, the change in his mood was too abrupt. I also introduced a little flashback of happier, simpler times— and then echoed that flashback in Danny's unusual, acrobatic transformation. _

_I can't remember if we ever saw Jazz acting as a peer counselor outside of her one scene with Spike in _Mystery Meat_, but it certainly seems like the sort of thing she would do. _

_Little things: Danny did not go downstairs to talk to the reality drill. Jack and Maddie are downstairs in the lab, working on the new Portal. And of course, I had to sneak in Vlad's "Welcome to the Block" bundt cake, for continuity's sake.  
_

* * *

_ A special "Thank You" bundt cake goes out to Cordria, who graciously joined JH24 on the beta-reading staff for this project.   
_


	11. Chapter 11

**Act II, Scene 5**

Danny was a little more than a black and white streak in the air above Amity Park, racing back to FentonWorks in search of his friends. He didn't have the first inkling of a plan, just an overwhelming urge to get back into the fight. Whatever the fight _was_. To be honest, he hadn't really been paying much attention to what Sam had said the night before. Something about the Guys in White and some kind of missile. Did she really say that they were planning to destroy the entire ghost zone?

He put on another burst of speed, whipping around the corner at the end of the block—right into the white-hot beam of an L-47A Hi-Capacity short-range blaster, fired by one of the white-suited agents standing on his own front stoop. The beam hit Danny square in the chest and sent him soaring backwards to crash into the third storey of the apartment building across the street. As he tried to clear his head and get his bearings, a half-dozen more agents came into view: in windows, both upstairs and down, as well as on the roof around the Ops Center. All armed, all... firing!

"Whoa!" Danny did a mid-air back flip and took evasive action, as a torrent of blasts tore chunks out of bricks and concrete and smashed windows up and down the street. "Sam was right—it's a Guys in White invasion force!" He flew in fast, random spirals around the house, searching in vain for any sign of Sam and Tucker while barely avoiding more direct hits from the agents. Finally he fell back and sought shelter behind a billboard on the roof of a bank building several blocks away from the raging firefight. "I'll never get past them," he muttered to himself. "If I can't stop them directly, I've got to get to the one who's pulling their strings." With one last, irritated glance over his shoulder, he shot back into the air and headed east.

* * *

Author's Note:

Oh my God, where do I start? It's all going to be apologies tonight. First of all, an apology to Mark Drop, who wrote the original episode on which this re-write is based, and from which this particular scene is lifted almost intact. From the very start I had some concerns about the legitimacy of this project, and in the case of this particular chapter I feel almost... _dirty_. I've been scrupulous from the start to give Mark Drop credit for the original episode, but in this case I must apologize to him as well.

Next, I need to apologize to anyone who might have been reading this story when I last updated it. That would have been (I can't believe it) more than three years ago, in December 2007. I never left a story unfinished before, and I felt terrible about leaving this one unfinished. It may be too little, too late, but I promise I will finish it soon. Give me a few weeks.

Why did I stop updating? There were many reasons, none of which are good excuses. I had accomplished what I had set out to do, which was to rework that emotional scene between Danny and his butler. The scene that followed barely needed any reworking at all, which made me uncomfortable. Then I realized that I was no longer happy with the solution I had cobbled together for the password-reveal, and couldn't come up with a way to work around it. (I have since come up with a different solution, but I'm still not happy with it. Stay tuned.)

Ah, but now I'm back in business. Sorry this chapter is so short! The next one will be much, much (much) longer. In fact, it will feature two overlapping scenes, cutting back and forth between the Fentons' luxurious new home and Vlad Masters' even more sumptuous mansion next door.


	12. Chapter 12

_Author's note: Throughout the remainder of this story, rapid-fire transitions between brief scenes will (I hope) help to build tension and excitement. Bear with me! In a filmed episode, there would be plenty of visual cues to help the viewer follow the quick transitions. In this story, a horizontal line will mark these abrupt changes of scene. I'm not going to spend much time describing the settings, because the overlapping dialogue is more important, but there will always be a fairly solid clue early in each new scene to help the reader figure out where the action has moved to._

**Act II, Scene 6**

Meanwhile, back in the grand foyer of 7 Condescension Lane, two armed agents loomed menacingly on either side of the front door. Across the room, Agent Wye had one white-gloved hand firmly planted on Jazz's left shoulder, pinning her to the wall below a priceless impressionist painting of water lilies. Jazz managed to keep her voice mostly steady as she plaintively called, "Mo-o-o-om? Da-a-ad? Could you come upstairs for a minute? Please?"

From the foot of the stairs came Jack's voice, faint and a little irritated. "Can it wait, Jazzypants? We're about to get the reality drill back on line!"

Jazz gave Wye a shrug and an apologetic smile. He rolled his eyes and increased the pressure on her shoulder. "No, Dad, I don't think it can wait. I need you both up here!" The antique tall-case clock solemnly ticked off twelve long seconds. She broke out into a cold sweat. "Um… right now?"

That did the trick. The sound of Jack's heavy footsteps pounded up the staircase from the lab, and he burst into the foyer with Maddie close behind.

"Hey—look, Maddiekins, it's the Guys in White! Hi, Guys!"

"How nice!" Maddie beamed with delight. "We don't get many visitors. Welcome, welcome to our new home, won't you please come into the parlor? I believe we still have some lovely Lemon Swirl Bundt Cake, and I'm sure Pierre would be happy to make some coffee—"

Agent Wye casually removed his hand from Jazz's shoulder and managed to paste on something that almost looked like a smile as he greeted the girl's parents. "No thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton," he purred. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I would very much like to speak with your son."

"Danny?" Maddie was mystified. "What do you want with him?"

* * *

(Meanwhile, in the even grander house next door…)

"Daniel," Vlad Masters sighed, his smooth voice strained with irritation. "What do you want with me?" He glanced sourly at the smoking hole the boy had just made in one corner of his antique Louis XV desk.

Danny hovered menacingly and glared at the billionaire mayor across the length of the lavishly appointed home office, one upraised hand cradling a second pulsing green sphere of ectoplasmic energy. "I mean it, Vlad. Call off your goons."

"Goons? What goons?" Vlad sniffed disdainfully. "I don't have goons. And you're going to pay for that desk."

"Take it out of my allowance," Danny snapped. "I can afford it, thanks to you and your infernal meddling!" He fired his sphere at the mayor's smirking face, but a casual wave of Vlad's hand produced a sizzling pink shield that deflected the blast off to the left, where it smashed through a stained glass window.

"What ever are you babbling about? What meddling?"

* * *

"Meddling? _**Our**_ Danny? What ever are you talking about?"

The quiver in Maddie's voice betrayed a bit of tension as she led Agent Wye up the stairs towards Danny's bedroom. Jack was just a step behind, and the two armed agents completed the parade. Behind them, Jazz leaned casually against the wall at the foot of the stairs, and said airily, "You know, I don't think Danny's home right now." Nobody seemed to hear her, and she didn't seem to care.

The parade burst into Danny's room, where Mr. Hobson was still patiently working his way through the periodic table. "The atomic symbol of Mercury is Hg," he recited. "It is a metal, liquid at room temperature, with an atomic number of 80."

"Atomic number of 80," echoed the Danny-bot, taking careful notes.

Mr. Hobson nodded sagely, patted the boy on the shoulder, then turned to address the visitors. "Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, how good to see you again. As you can see, he is making very good progress in Chemistry—"

Agent Wye shoved the teacher aside and grabbed the Danny-bot by both shoulders, lifted him out of the chair and dumped him on the bed. "You know very well what this is about, don't you, kid?"

The robot stared back at him, speechless.

* * *

"I have no idea what you are talking about, you annoying little brat!"

Danny managed to dodge the blast, which barely singed his left shoulder before smashing something in the corner behind him. Vlad let loose a howl of anger when he realized that he had just blown the head off his second-favorite Michelangelo sculpture.

Danny took a deep breath and tried again. "You tricked my parents into selling you their house, so you could get control of our portal and stop me from using it, and then you put the Guys in White in there to shoot at me when I came back!" He floated closer and closer to the fruitloop until they were nearly nose to nose. "And now they're holding Sam and Tucker, and I swear, I'm not gonna let you get away with this!"

"I _tricked_ your parents into selling—?" Vlad abruptly doubled over with maniacal laughter. Danny just watched him, momentarily stunned by his rival's strange behavior.

It didn't last long. Only a few seconds passed before Vlad got his self-control back, straightened up and flung out his right fist, snaring Danny in a swirling net of violet energy. "Are you out of your puny, untrained, severely limited mind? Do you possess even the slightest ability to form a rational thought? Why ever would I do anything to arrange for you AND your idiot father to live right… next… door… to me?"

There was a stunned silence while Danny's mind raced in dizzying circles. If it wasn't Vlad, then who…? How did the Guys in White…? and when? and _why_?

Contemptuous, Vlad opened his fist and released the confused ghost boy from the net. He needed to dedicate his own vast, keenly honed intellect to considering the implications: The Guys in White were in control of the Fenton Portal. How intriguing! He gathered his dignity, sat down at the ruin of his antique desk, and chuckled quietly, "I wonder what they're doing there."

* * *

"You know exactly why we're here," Agent Wye told the robot. "Two nights ago you broke into a government installation and put a password-protected lock on our ghost portal."

"Ghost portal?" Jack interrupted with glee. "You have one, too? That's really cool!"

Maddie sighed at Jack's obtuseness. "It's _our _ghost portal, isn't it?"

"It's not your ghost portal any more, ma'am. We bought it, fair and square. It's government property now, except this meddling kid locked us out." Wye grabbed the Danny-bot by the upper arm and gave him a vigorous shake.

"Let him go!" Enraged, Maddie grabbed Wye by the wrist and gave it a vigorous twist, distracting him enough to make him drop the Danny-bot back onto the bed. "Our Danny would never do such a thing!"

"We have him on video," Wye snapped. "His two little friends wired it, but he was the one who programmed the password. And I'm only going to ask once: What is the password?"

The Danny-bot blinked at the tall human male in the white business suit. It had been programmed at the factory to comply with all reasonable requests made by humans, but it did not know the answer to the man's question. Nonetheless, it dedicated all of its considerable computing power to the task. It cross-referenced terabytes of data about the human boy it had been designed to resemble, then calculated probabilities to three hundred decimal places. For the convenience of the humans, it rounded off the results and calmly announced, "The probability is 87.3% that the password is 'PaulinaFenton'."

"PaulinaFenton," Agent Wye muttered, quickly counting out the number of characters on his fingers. Thirteen—perfect. He pulled out his two-way radio and barked, "Ecks! Try password 'PaulinaFenton,'" then listened while, miles away in the Ops Center at FentonWorks, Agent Eks halted the random password generator and typed in the new phrase. Seconds later, the answer came back: no match. Wye lowered the radio and growled, "Don't play games with me, kid. You know very well that's not the password."

Unperturbed, the Danny-bot quietly ran a few million more calculations, factoring in its considerable knowledge of human behavioral psychology. "If 'PaulinaFenton' is not the password," it recited, "then the probability is now 67.4% that the password is—"

* * *

_Author's Note_

_What's new here? Almost everything. The only thing that's the same is that Danny went to Vlad's house. Of course, in the original episode, Vlad wasn't home! One of my goals in this project was to increase the number of significant interactions among the characters._

_In the episode, the password was 'Open Sesame,' which the hapless Tucker gave away in some cringe-worthy dialogue. ("Says who?" "Says me!") I did have a different password-revealing plan in place, three years ago, building on Sam and Tucker's fake-out-make-out, but it was horribly complex and ended up requiring far more dialogue that the story could support. It was only when I started working on the story again last month that the new scenario came to mind. It's a bit of a stretch, but I think it's more defensible than "Says me." _

_Before you jump all over me, let me say that there are two possible ways by which the Danny-bot might have known about Danny's tendency to use 'PaulinaFenton' as a default password. First, it was programmed at the factory with a wealth of information about Danny's background, including his friendships with Tucker and Sam. It is not inconceivable that it would also know about Danny's well known high-school crush. Second, because Danny wanted the 'bot to be able to substitute for himself during school hours, he may have given it the password to his own personal computer, which actually is 'PaulinaFenton.' _

_I hope you didn't mind the rapid back-and-forth between the scenes, because that will be even more evident in the next chapter, and will continue to happen going forward. I'm trying to build up tension by stepping up the pace. I think that's consistent with the way many good _Danny Phantom_ episodes were scripted. _


	13. Chapter 13

_Disclaimer: The episode "Livin' Large" was written by Mark Drop._

**Act II, Scene 7**

"You have got to be kidding," Agent Ecks said to his senior agent over the radio. "That can't be right! Weren't these two kids…? Hang on." He glanced back over his shoulder at the adolescent lovebirds, who were still handcuffed together on the opposite side of the Ops Center. The girl named Sam glared back at him, her free hand clenched into a tight fist. The boy Tucker was apparently taking a nap.

Ecks shook his head wearily and muttered to himself, "What the heck. Couldn't hurt to try." He typed:

**S A M A N T H A F E N T O N**

The computer beeped loudly and the video displays all began to flash: PASSWORD ACCEPTED. Tucker awoke with a jerk and asked, "What's going on?"

Ecks picked up the radio again and shouted, "Sir! We're in! We're in!"

* * *

In Danny's bedroom, Agent Wye's somber face broke into something that almost resembled a broad smile. "Good. We're in. Get that door open and commence the countdown for the launch of the Ghost Zone Missile."

In horrified unison, Jack and Maddie cried, "The WHAT?"

* * *

Vlad leapt to his feet and cried, "WHAT?"

Danny floated back a few feet, caught off-guard by the fruitloop's reaction. "I said, they're going to fire some kind of super-missile through the portal, and it's supposed to destroy the entire Ghost Zone." He paused, distracted by the older ghost's rapid pacing—back and forth, back and forth across the room. "Or, at least, that's what Sam and Tucker heard them say."

"Of course!" Vlad stopped short. "A couple of silly children, they probably made it all up. Nothing on earth could possibly power a weapon so powerful."

"Hey! Sam and Tucker wouldn't invent a story like that!"

"Unless they managed to get their hands on some…." In a flash, Vlad was back at his desk, typing furiously on his computer, muttering to himself, "No, it's not possible. The government would never do something so foolish, so reckless, so idiotic—"

Danny maneuvered around behind the desk, trying to peer over Vlad's shoulder without getting close enough to provoke another attack.

"Aaargh!" Vlad smashed a fist straight through his computer monitor, which exploded in a shower of sparks. "The Guys in White placed an order for six grams of anti-ectons from Axion Labs just three weeks ago. And those half-brained idiots sold it to them!"

"Uh, don't those half-brained idiots work for you?"

Fortunately, Vlad didn't seem to hear that. He was tapping his fingertips rapidly on the surface of the desk and muttering to himself, "They have no idea what they're doing. All they had to do was come to me, I would have told them so. If only they would have thought to ask a man with a background in ghost science, I could have told them how incredibly dangerous this is, how perfectly insane—"

* * *

"—how incredibly dangerous," Jack Fenton bellowed, "how perfectly insane this is!"

Maddie laid a hand on her husband's enormous forearm, perhaps to restrain him from following up his red-faced rant with some physical smack-down. "Agent Wye," she said firmly but calmly, "you really don't seem to understand how unstable anti-ectons are. If they come into contact with even the slightest, microscopic trace of ectoplasm, there would be a massive annihilation explosion. The whole house could blow up!"

"We sanitized the lab after you moved out," Agent Wye snapped. "We're not that stupid. Besides which, the anti-ectons are sealed inside the Ghost Zone Missile. They won't be released until two minutes after launch, by which time they'll be several miles inside the Ghost Zone."

Jack roared, "And you think that's better? The Ghost Zone is an entire universe made of ectoplasm! Are you out of your mind?"

All traces of calm moderation gone, Maddie cried, "Don't you people have even the slightest understanding of multi-dimensional quantum physics?"

* * *

Vlad grabbed Danny by the shoulders and shook him. "Don't you have even the slightest understanding of multi-dimensional quantum physics?"

"No!" Danny phased out of his grip and floated away to a cautious distance. "I don't think we covered that in school yet."

"Two planes of existence!" Vlad held up two fingers for emphases. "Two! In opposing harmony, a dimensional structure in perfect balance. Destroy one, and what do you suppose happens to the other, hmmm?"

"Uh… kablooey?"

* * *

In exact unison, Jack and Maddie shouted, "Kablooey!"

Agent Wye wasn't impressed. With exaggerated dignity he straightened his white tie and headed for the door, saying, "Well, that's your opinion. We have our own opinions, from the very best scientists on the government payroll. Our orders came from the highest levels." He glanced at his watch and chuckled smugly. "Besides which, it's too late! The countdown started already. We're at T-minus six and a half minutes."

He nearly bowled Jazz over in the hallway as he left. Drawn upstairs by all the yelling, Jazz squeezed past the agents into the bedroom—then yelped when she saw the Danny-bot sitting innocently on the bed. Nobody seemed to notice her odd reaction. Over in the corner, Mr. Hobson sat on Danny's Aeron chair and quietly shut itself down.

"Oh Jack," Maddie cried. "What will we do?"

"The only thing we can do, sweetheart." Jack struck a heroic pose. "We stop them."

* * *

"I've got to stop them!" Danny cried. "I just need to get to a portal…"

"_We_ will stop them." Vlad leapt from his chair and transformed, then flew across the room to a gilded bust of himself that perched prominently on the black marble mantelpiece. He tipped the sculpture's head backwards to reveal a hidden switch.

"Oh, that's very clever," Danny muttered sarcastically, as the enormous, ugly portrait of Vlad Masters on a rearing warhorse slid aside to reveal the swirling ectoplasmic veil of an active portal. "I _never_ would have thought to look there. And anyway, what do you mean, 'we'? Why should I work with you? You're my arch-enemy!"

"You just don't get it, do you?" Vlad snarled. "This isn't about _us_, Daniel. It isn't about trust, it isn't about power, and it isn't about such puny concepts as 'good' and 'evil'." He glared at the boy, who glared back. "It's about _survival_. I like this universe. I want my world—both of my worlds—to still be here tomorrow."

Danny gave it about half a second's thought, then leapt through the portal into the Ghost Zone without looking back to see whether Plasmius would follow.

* * *

_Author's Note: I mentioned, several chapters back, that I would leave the science to the scientists. Here it is, from the mouths of three scientists: destroy the Ghost Zone, you destroy this world as well. Anti-ectons are my idea, a concept distantly related to antiprotons, which actually do exist. Antimatter, when used in fiction, can be relied on to produce some terrific explosions! (Or to propel your starship at warp speed.)_

_From the very beginning of the project, I knew that Vlad would be home when Danny arrived there. I kept his ugly painting and hidden switch, but since Danny didn't know that Vlad even had a portal in Amity Park (see chapter 2), I couldn't let him search for them. I had to let Vlad do the honors. _

_I am beginning to realize that there is no way this story could fit into a 22-minute episode without some massive editing. Gives me new respect for Mr. Drop and his fellow TV writers, who don't have the option of letting their imaginations run wild. _


	14. Chapter 14

**Act II, Scene 8**

"T-minus five minutes and counting," intoned the computer voice.

Sam and Tucker watched and listened in horrified silence as footsteps thundered up the stairs of FentonWorks to the Ops Center. A dozen white-suited agents streamed into the circular control room, fanning out to open the steel shutters that had kept the room in shadows all day long. Agent Ecks blinked in the bright sunshine for a few seconds before donning his regulation Ray-Bans. He was now nominally in command of the most delicate phase of the operation; before him, the array of computers were tracking the systems of the Ghost Zone Missile as the countdown proceeded.

Without warning, Agent Kew loomed over the pair of teens. He smirked down at them and said, "Seems like your little friend gave up the password without a fight. So I guess we don't need you any more."

Sam's heart seized inside her chest. Tucker grabbed her hand and squeezed it, hard—he was as stunned as she was, and was trying to communicate something to her. Support? Sympathy? Possibly dread. It was one thing for Danny to stay behind and leave them do the grunt work; after all, there were no ghosts here and she always wanted to be in on the action. But for him to deliberately betray them, to simply hand victory over to the bad guys. . . Despite the hand gripping hers, so hard it was starting to hurt, she had never felt so totally alone in her life.

The agent just stood there, grinning and toying with his miniature weapon. He was certainly enjoying this turn of events, far more than mere professionalism might require. Eventually he grew bored and leaned over to unlock their handcuffs. As Tucker pulled Sam to her feet, the man added, "Take my advice: Run far. Run fast." One last, creepy grin. "And don't look back."

They fled down the stairs. Behind them, the computer intoned, "T-minus three minutes and counting."

* * *

Vlad Plasmius and Danny Phantom shot through the Ghost Zone at unprecedented speed, barely noticing the handful of ghosts who marked their passage. Johnny 13 skidded his motorcycle to a screeching stop to avoid being flattened; for a brief second he thought about ordering Shadow to chase them, but they were moving far too fast for Shadow to catch up. Youngblood, dressed in a astronaut costume and braced in a massive slingshot rig, paused the countdown on his space-rocket fantasy. He called out a friendly challenge for the halfas to come and play, but his voice was lost in the wake of their passing. Skulker observed them approaching from a fair distance, read the signs as a good hunter should, then quietly retracted his weapons and headed for safer hunting grounds.

No ghost should be so foolish to take them both on at once.

For a while Danny maintained the lead, but as they drew closer to their goal, Vlad pulled ahead and gave Danny a view of the bottom of his boots and a bitter taste of his ectoplasmic trail. Danny ground his teeth in frustration and strained for an extra burst of speed so he could take the lead again. His hatred for Vlad was a powerful motivator, multiplied exponentially when they were both in ghost form, and it galled him to have him so close. The last thing he wanted to do was follow him, not anywhere, not even to the apocalypse.

There couldn't be more than five miles or so between Porter Heights and downtown Amity Park, but the distance from portal to portal seemed to be nearly halfway across the Ghost Zone. Several minutes passed in grim silence before the two half-ghosts caught sight of the bulky, hexagonal frame of the Fenton Portal in the distance. Even from nearly a mile away, they could see a tiny glimpse of the FentonWorks lab through the open door.

The _open_ door.

"No-o-o-o-o!" Danny screamed.

* * *

Agent Kew reached into the refrigerator and pressed the red button located to the right of the emergency ham. "Procedure 12-G commenced," he announced.

From his seat at the Ops Center controls, Agent Ecks began to review the checklist. "Procedure 12-G, commenced. Hatches sealed, docking clamps released…" A few seconds ticked by. Suddenly the floor of the Ops Center lurched, sending a couple of agents tumbling to the floor. "Blimp deployed."

The computer added, "T-minus thirty seconds and counting."

The entire Ops Center, now suspended beneath an enormous blimp bearing the smiling face of Jack Fenton, lifted slowly away from the roof of FentonWorks and began to drift westwards in the breeze. On the sidewalk below, Tucker and Sam stared upwards, mouths gaping, and backed slowly, slowly away from the house.

Tucker pulled out his cell phone and dialed without looking. "C'mon, Danny," he pleaded. "Answer the phone. Answer already. We need you!"

A gleaming white sedan screeched to a halt in the street directly in front of them. Agent Wye climbed out and looked up at the blimp, nodding with grim satisfaction at the impending completion of his mission. His radio, lying on the dashboard, transmitted the computer's voice: "T-minus fifteen seconds and counting. Commencing ignition…." From the house came a muffled roar, and the whole street began to shake. One of FentonWorks' ground floor windows shattered, and soon a cloud of thick, black smoke began to billow out.

Wye picked up the radio and barked, "Good work, men. I'll meet you at the rendezvous." He jumped back into the car and sped away.

_

* * *

_

_Author's note_

_In the episode, this part of the story featured a slapstick sequence down in the lab, at the end of which the Guys decided that the whole operation was jinxed and that they no longer wanted to be there. That was, in turn, a development from the earlier notion that the Fentons' lab was full of shoddy equipment. In my story, Jack and Maddie took all their well-made equipment with them when they left, and the Guys in White are quite competent (and thus, far more dangerous)._

_The logical outcome of putting the Guys in White up in the Ops Center instead of down in the lab was to use the blimp for their getaway. I hope I was able to surprise some of you with that! And I hope you'll forgive me for bypassing the whole Danny-on-a-motorcycle shtick. I did think long and hard about bringing Johnny, Youngblood and Skulker along to help Danny and Vlad fight the missile, but in the end decided to leave that job to Danny and Vlad alone. Arranging for a crowd of ghosts set aside their differences to help save the world __twice__ in once season (see also: _Phantom Planet_) would have been a bit too much, don't you think?_


	15. Chapter 15

**Act II, Scene 9**

Through the Fenton Portal's open door, the two half-ghosts witnessed the sudden burst of orange flames that lit up the basement laboratory. Danny's heart sank with despair—they were too late! But they both pressed on, those last few, desperate yards, and reached the portal just as the countdown reached zero and the missile was released from its cradle.

There was only the slightest window of opportunity, just a second or so as the missile began its flight, and against all probability Danny managed to catch the very tip of the nose-cone with both hands and push with all his might to counteract the force of the rocket engine. In an instant, he was joined by four Vlads, each one taking hold of different stabilizer fin and all straining so hard that their pink auras flared erratically.

For just a moment, Danny cursed himself for not thinking to duplicate while he had the chance—now that he was engaged with the missile, he couldn't risk losing his grip while dividing himself. But then he remembered the lesson he had learned over these last few weeks, the truth that Vlad would never have dared reveal: duplicating didn't make him any more powerful. In fact, when Danny had finally managed to do it, he discovered that each duplicate had only about one-quarter of his full ghostly strength. Danny decided that he was far better off staying exactly where he was, focusing all his power right at the one spot where it was needed most, just barely managing to counteract the missile's forward thrust. Vlad's decision to duplicate was a good one, too; his four duplicates were spread out evenly around the missile's girth, holding it steady and stopping it from kicking out sideways.

Danny gritted his teeth and pushed even harder. Miraculously, inch by agonizing inch, the missile began to slowly move backwards, its rocket engines still roaring furiously inside the FentonWorks lab.

But how long could they keep this up?

* * *

As the Ops Center Blimp floated slowly away, the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle skidded to a screeching halt at the edge of a panicked crowd that was stampeding down the street in the opposite direction. The family piled out of the vehicle into the middle of the street and stared, momentarily paralyzed in horrified fascination at the raging fire that had engulfed FentonWorks. Flames licked from all the windows and black, oily smoke billowed into the sky, casting a gloomy shadow over the whole neighborhood. The screaming sirens of approaching fire engines echoed from several directions.

Jack sniffed the air and said, "That's rocket fuel."

Maddie started to push through the crowd, toward the burning house, but Jack caught her by the arms and pulled her back. She only struggled for a second or two, as the reality of the situation sank in. Their portal was in the center of a raging inferno. There was nothing they could do.

Maddie buried her face in Jack's chest and asked quietly, "How long?"

He glanced down at his watch. "Based on what Agent Wye said, they probably launched their missile just over a minute ago. He said they would drop the payload—what, two minutes after launch?"

Maddie sagged in his arms. "Two minutes into the Ghost Zone."

Jazz felt a sudden heaviness in her chest. Her only comfort came from the knowledge that the boy-figure standing beside her was not her brother. She had figured it out during the high-speed ride through the streets; Danny never would have sat there so quietly in his seat with their father driving. No, it must be that look-alike robot that Danny had purchased, which meant that there still might be a very slim chance. She had watched Danny fly away, in ghost form, not ten minutes earlier; did he even know what was about to happen?

A few yards down the street, Sam and Tucker finally managed to fight their way to the edge of the horde of fleeing civilians. They corrected course and headed towards the Fentons' RV, the ground under their feet still trembling and quaking. Disgusted, Sam threw Danny a reproachful look, but Tucker quickly tapped her on the elbow and pointed to his own cheek. Sudden understanding dawned as she looked more closely at the figure she had mistaken for her half-ghost friend. Cheek rivets!

But, if that was the robot, then—where was Danny?

* * *

"Aaaaaauuuuuuggghh!"

Danny's ghost form was immensely strong, but his strength was not limitless. His green-white aura started to flare and waver as he began to doubt whether he could keep up the fight against the missile much longer. From the corner of his eye, he could glimpse other ghosts approaching hesitantly from various directions, not attacking—but not helping, either. The four Vlads were still straining in equilibrium, but from the increasing thrust of the missile against his hands and arms, Danny suspected that his arch-enemy was no longer pushing so much as he was struggling to maintain lateral stability.

And then, without warning, the missile's rocket-fuel supply simply ran out. The missile, Danny and all four Vlads immediately shot through the portal and smashed into the wall at the opposite end of the FentonWorks lab. Danny barely registered the fact that his house was on fire—he recognized the most crucial problem in an instant and whipped around to close the portal doors.

Only then did he pause to take stock of their surroundings. There was nothing left in the lab to burn; benches, shelves and other furniture had already been reduced to acrid ash and twisted metal. The bare concrete walls, floor and ceiling of the basement lab were blackened with soot. The air was like a furnace. Above their heads, FentonWorks burned like a torch.

"Daniel, no!"

Danny had already gone intangible and was prepared to escape, but instead he smashed headfirst into a bright pink shield of ectoplasmic energy. Vlad's energy. Danny recovered, turned back and glared back at the fruitloop, who had reabsorbed his extra bodies and was now flattened against the wall to the left of the portal. Gesticulating wildly, Danny yelled, "What are you waiting for? Missile stopped, portal closed, Ghost Zone saved, and in case you didn't notice, BUILDING ON FIRE!"

Vlad answered quietly, letting the otherworldly echo of his ghost voice carry his words clearly across the lab. "Come here. Immediately." With one trembling finger, he pointed at the remains of the missile. "We're not finished yet."

Although the missile was crumpled in a heap, a small door in the metal skin suddenly popped open, just a foot or so below the nose cone. A small puff of sparkling particles shot out through the opening. Even through the lingering smoke that clouded the lab, Danny could see the growing cluster of tiny, glistening motes twirl and dance through the air.

"Oh, yeah," Danny whispered under his breath. The missile wasn't the weapon, it was just the delivery vehicle. The _payload_ was the weapon. Six grams of anti-ectons.

Slowly, ever so carefully, Danny floated around the perimeter of the room to join Vlad, never taking his eyes off that scintillating, deadly cloud as it began to drift lazily across the lab. When he reached Vlad's side, he whispered, "Okay. Is there a good way to contain that stuff?"

"No." Vlad reached over, as though to give the boy a comforting pat on the shoulder, and without warning yanked a single white hair from the top of Danny's head.

"Hey— Ow! What was that for?"

The only answer Danny got was a sly, knowing smile. Vlad lifted the hair to his lips and released it as he blew, slow and steady. The glowing hair wafted gently across the ruined lab, tumbling end-over-end toward the sparkling cloud of anti-ectons. Danny watched its progress in horrified fascination as the passing seconds seemed to slow to a crawl.

Vlad leaned over and whispered in his ear, "If you hope to survive this, I suggest that you try intangibility."

Danny blinked twice, as comprehension kicked in. He went intangible, just in the nick of time.

**FOOOOOOM!**

_

* * *

_

Author's note:

_Yeah, I did it. I set FentonWorks on fire AND I blew it up. For a while I thought that would be a bit too much destruction for one episode, and struggled to think of a way to do one or the other but not both, but in the end I felt it was justified. I was very irritated that the original story turned the apocalyptic weapon that could destroy an entire universe—no, two universes—into a mess of silly pink goo. _

_Of course, once I settled on anti-ectons as my weapon, it would no longer work to just hurl a big Ghost Zone boulder at it. I was a bit stumped until I remembered that any rocket would run out of fuel eventually, and the Ghost Zone Missile wasn't really all that big, nor was it designed to travel very far. So I decided that Danny and Vlad could handle it together for a two-minute burn. Once the missile was back inside the lab and the doors were closed, it would only take a tiny bit of ectoplasm to set off six grams of anti-ectons. For a while there, Vlad was going to toss a glove, but I'm glad he thought to use one of Danny's hairs instead. _

_In the original episode, Jack, Maddie and Jazz were never even aware of the danger. I wanted to bring them back into the story, to witness the disaster unfolding. What could possibly make them appreciate their old home more, than to see it destroyed? _

_I noticed recently that a reader named Invader Johnny has posted a review to every chapter of this story—and every chapter of every other _DP_ story I have posted here. His comments are often short, and not always favorable, but always honest: good, simple criticism that keeps me on my toes. In fact, a comment he posted a couple of chapters back made me realize that I had neglected a certain aspect of one scene; I went back and fixed the error, just because he was absolutely right. So Johnny, as you are the only person to have posted a review to the previous chapter, this one's for you. I hope you liked it. (But I'm pretty sure you'll let me know.) _


	16. Chapter 16

_Author's Note:_

_I decided to move the "what's different here" commentary to the beginning of this, the last installment of the episode rewrite project. Yes, it's finally finished._

_In the original episode, the Fentons arrived at FentonWorks unexpectedly, just as the Guys in White were frantically abandoning their failed mission. There had been nothing in the scenes leading up to that moment to indicate that any of them were in the least bit dissatisfied with their new life of luxury, but there they were. _

_Nitpick alert! Jack gave the Guys in White their check back. If he and Maddie never deposited that check, how in the world did they buy a huge mansion and fill it with furniture, science equipment, electronics and servants? _

_Most Danny Phantom episodes ended with a joke. I struggled long and hard to come up with something sufficiently funny to mark the end of this project, until I remembered that a lot of those end-of-episode jokes were not particularly funny. But they were immediately followed by that little snippet of theme song and the title card, and it didn't seem to matter how lame the joke was. After all, how could we ever forget 'Backwash'? _

_(No, seriously. How can I forget 'Backwash'? I really want to know.) _

_Anyway, the episode "Livin' Large" ended with the Tucker-bot, inexplicably present at FentonWorks while the family moved back home, whacking Danny on the head for no apparent reason. Could I come up with a funnier gag than that? To be honest, probably not. But I hope the rest of the scene makes up for it. _

Disclaimer: This revision is based on the episode _Livin' Large _by Mark Drop.

**Act II, Scene 10**

Danny Fenton groaned as he slowly dragged himself to his feet, gazing up to the open sky, where a cloud of dust and ash was quickly dispersing in the strong breeze. To his left, Vlad Masters calmly brushed off one sleeve of his tailored suit jacket. Golden sunlight filtered down on the two humans as they stood together in the wreckage of the FentonWorks lab. Most of the building above them was gone, blown into a million tiny pieces and scattered across a two-mile radius.

"You see, Daniel? All it took was a tiny amount of pure ectoplasm, in physical contact with the anti-ectons, to initiate a matter/anti-matter annihilation explosion."

Despite his weariness, Danny gave Vlad a shove. Not enough to knock him over, he was too exhausted for that, but enough to put the old man on notice about a debt that was yet to be paid. "You— _you_ did that! You blew up my house—you did that on purpose!"

"Of course I did! If I hadn't, all those anti-ectons would still be floating around loose, waiting to annihilate any ectoplasm they might bump into. Perhaps some blob of residue stuck to one of your parents' weapons. Perhaps an actual ghost." He leaned in close, glaring at the boy nose-to-nose. "Perhaps me."

"But—YOU BLEW UP MY HOUSE!"

Vlad turned his back on Danny and smiled. "I will admit, that was something of a bonus." With just the slightest wobble in his step, he began to pick his way across rubble towards the remains of the staircase.

"But—" Danny scrambled after him. "The house was on fire! What happened to the fire?"

Vlad stopped at the foot of the stairs and shook his head wearily. "There was an explosion, Daniel. Explosion, no air. No air, no fire. Really, it's all very basic science."

* * *

Outside, the clouds of smoke and pulverized debris were drifting westward as the throng of neighbors, fellow-citizens and random curiosity-seekers gathered to find out what had happened. Most of FentonWorks was simply. . . gone. One of the outer walls on the back side of the ruin was still standing as high as the second floor; two other walls ended roughly at the level of the first-floor windowsills. The wall on the kitchen side of the building—the wall that had been closest to the stairway leading to the lab—was completely gone.

Paramedics scurried around the edges of the crowd, treating dozens of bystanders for minor injuries and shock. Firefighters swarmed into the wreckage to make sure that there was nobody inside and that no pockets of fire remained. Three television crews began to set up for live remotes, and the mayor's advance team quickly erected a stage for a press conference, compete with podium, city seal, flags, microphone and speakers. The mayor had an uncanny knack for turning up at the scene of any disaster, so they expected him to appear at any moment.

Halfway down the block, Maddie Fenton buried her face in her husband's shoulder and sobbed, "Our house, our beautiful house, how could they?" Jack patted her gently on the shoulder, a tear slowly rolling down his cheek. Behind them, Jazz cried openly and without shame. Only the Danny-bot remained quietly unmoved, though it diligently processed the input and tried to make some sense of it. After 18.9 seconds it gave up and asked, "What just happened?"

Jack sighed. "I don't really know. I guess the missile must have misfired. It burned up all its fuel without ever leaving the lab, and then…" His voice cracked, overwhelmed by the dreadful thought of how very near a miss it had been.

"Mr. Fenton! Mrs. Fenton!"

It was one of the mayor's aides, shoving onlookers aside as he approached through the crowd. "Mr and Mrs. Fenton," the aide gushed breathlessly, "would you please come up to the podium? Mayor Masters is about to address the media, and he'd very much like you to be there." Belatedly noticing the rest of the family, he added, "and Miss Fenton and little, Danny too, of course. All of you."

Jack tried to put on a brave face. "Yes, of course we'll come. Come on kids, our mayor calls, mustn't keep him waiting."

They made a forlorn parade as people in the crowd shuffled to clear a pathway for them. Thousands of eyes stared at them, observing with deepest sympathy the huge man's red eyes, the woman's trembling lip, the older girl's sniffles, the boy's noble calm. The Fentons climbed the portable steps up to the temporary stage, and the mayor greeted them with welcoming arms and a keenly calculated expression of deep concern. The cameras caught every nuance. Vlad could practically feel his poll numbers rising.

"Maddie, my dear! Jack. . . Jasmine. . . er, Danny?" He lost his composure for a second or so, but recovered quickly. "What a terrible tragedy this was!"

"Oh, Vlad," Maddie sighed. "I never realized how much that old house meant to me!"

Jack nodded in agreement. "I don't know how we can go back to Porter Heights, to that cold, echoing barn of a mansion, after all this. . . ."

Maddie was lost in her memories. "We bought that house right after we got married. Do you remember, Jack? We spent our honeymoon painting it. Our children grew up in that house. All those thousands of long evenings down in the lab. We—"

"But, wait! I have an important announcement!" Vlad suddenly realized how he could turn this to his advantage. He could get rid of Jack and Danny, make Maddie eternally grateful, score points with the voters—and make a tidy profit in the process.

"I can't allow you to lose your home forever, such a precious store of memories," he said magnanimously, with just the perfect touch of empathetic smarm in his voice. "I'll just take that awful, drafty old mansion off your hands, lock stock and butler." The corner of Vlad's mouth twitched at his little joke, but nobody else seemed to get it. "Just sign it all over to me. And in exchange, I'll pay to completely rebuild FentonWorks, from the ground up, exactly the way it was. Every cozy little room, every humble stick of mismatched furniture, every knickknack and pillow and coffee cup." He paused for effect. The crowed was eating it up. "Great big tacky sign and all!"

"Oh, Vlad!" sighed Maddie. "You would do that, all that, for us?"

"For you," Vlad gushed, with slight emphasis on the second word as he gazed into Maddie's eyes, "for you, my dear, anything."

* * *

"Oh, gross!"

"Danny!" Sam spun around and spied her best friend, leaning casually against the side of the family RV. His thick mop of hair was gray with ash, one sleeve of his t-shirt was torn, and after he made eye contact he briefly hung his head with something that could be either exhaustion or humility. She and Tucker both ran to him—but Sam got there first, flinging her arms around him in a tight bear hug. Still weak from his ordeal with the missile, Danny staggered backwards a few steps until she let him go. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?" And then, under her breath, she hissed "What happened?"

"Tell you later," he replied, turning his attention back to what was going on up front with his family. "Too. . . complicated. And I want to listen to this. . ."

* * *

Up on the stage, Jazz anxiously scanned the faces in the crowd. She was pretty sure that she had just heard Sam's voice, calling out her brother's name, and finally she caught a glimpse of the three best friends, huddled together over by the RV—Danny in the middle, his friends' arms around his shoulders, looking weary but grimly satisfied. She blinked away her tears and gave a little finger wave; a few voices in the crowd murmured about how strong and brave she must be.

"Miss Fenton?"

That was metro-beat reporter Sunnie Dayes, who was holding out a WAPW microphone and looking at her expectantly. Jazz realized that she must have missed a question addressed to her. She gave her most humble, ingratiating smile and said, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"Oh, certainly," Sunnie said brightly. "This must be such an emotional roller-coaster ride for you. What are your thoughts, now that you've heard Mayor Masters' unbelievably generous offer?"

Jazz hesitated, blinking in the strong light of the television crew, and said, "Well, if there's one thing I've learned over the last few days, it's that home isn't about size, or wealth, or luxury. Home is about warmth, and togetherness, and lo—"

"That's nice. And what about you, young man?" Sunnie elbowed past Jazz to shove her microphone in the Danny-bot's face. "Won't you miss your great big beautiful mansion, and all your amazing, high-tech toys?"

Many people watching from the crowd, and others who saw it on the television news that evening, would swear that they saw a tear glistening on the boy's face. It made him look noble, and vulnerable, and downright adorable. Sam, Tucker and Danny knew it was just sunlight reflecting off a cheek rivet. Several dramatic seconds ticked by before the answer came:

"Could we please keep the robot?"

_

* * *

_

**TITLE CARD: _LIVIN' LARGER_**

_**Closing credits****: **Did I mention that this rewrite project was based on the original episode "Livin' Large," by Mark Drop? Yeah, a few times. But it bears repeating. My hat is off to him. He made it fit in 22 minutes, with the commercial break in the right place, and didn't take him three years to finish._

_

* * *

___

And that's all she wrote. No, I mean that literally: that's all I wrote. I'm done with fanfiction, for the time being anyway. I may come back to writing someday, but it will likely be in a very different form, for a completely different genre.

_I'm very grateful to those who took the time to give feedback, both for this and my other stories. You have no idea how precious your messages are to me. My deepest thanks go to JH24 and Cordria, who were my beta readers for this project, back in 2007. _

_If I've managed to entertain you, for just a little while, I've done what I set out to do. Wishing you fair winds and blue skies—_

_Melanie (bluemoonalto)_

Buh-dah-dah dah-dum, dah-dum!


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